


Can't Carry It With You (if you want to survive)

by Owlship



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Nux Lives, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-21
Updated: 2015-12-09
Packaged: 2018-04-05 09:52:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 29,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4175415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Owlship/pseuds/Owlship
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's something howling out in the sands, but it doesn't sound like any dingo Furiosa has ever heard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [a prompt](http://madmaxkink.dreamwidth.org/450.html?thread=257986#cmt257986) at the Mad Max kinkmeme asking for werewolves, because apparently my role in life is to write as many silly AU's as possible.
> 
> Title from Florence + The Machine's "Dog Days are Over"

There's something howling out in the sands, but it doesn't sound like any dingo Furiosa has ever heard.

“It's someone's dog,” Toast says as the girls crowd around an open window, listening to the eerie noises float to the top of the Citadel's tower.

“Dogs don't exist anymore,” Capable replies with a frown.

“Their song sounds sad,” The Dag puts in.

“It sounds creepy to me,” counters Cheedo, “I'm glad we're up here and whatever it is is down there.”

“It's just a couple of dingos,” Furiosa says in hopes of quelling the discussion, “They probably smell the water and are checking the place out. When they realize how many people there are they'll move on.”

“It's dogs, I'm telling you,” Toast replies. “Bet someone has them trained to hunt, lure people away from their camps and bam!” She lunges with arms extended like claws at Cheedo, who shrieks and skitters away.

The howls continue the next night but fall silent after that, to Furiosa's relief. Whether dingos or dogs or some other creature, noises in the night rarely herald pleasant things to come.

  


Furiosa is out on an overnight scouting assignment a few weeks later when she hears the howling again, rising and falling with the wind. The light of the full moon is enough to let her see across the sand dunes and she takes advantage of this to search in the direction she thinks the howls are coming from.

They sound much closer than they had in the tower, and she reflexively checks that her pistol is strapped to her waist. Wild animals larger than lizards are uncommon, but no less of a threat for their scarcity. One or two dingos- or dogs- she could handle on her own, thanks to the light provided by the cloudless sky, but she's not counting on it being an easy fight.

Movement over one of the dunes catches her eyes and she raises her gun, waiting for the shadowy shape to become clearer. It's moving towards her slowly, but doesn't seem to be predatory. Maybe Toast was right and it is someone's dog, trained to approach humans without fear.

The creature resolves itself into the largest animal she has ever seen, a great shaggy beast with dark fur and eyes that almost seem to glow blue in the moonlight. Furiosa keeps the gun aimed at it steadily, ready to shoot if it seems the least bit aggressive.

More movement behind the beast reveals a second creature, this one lankier with brighter fur and the same strange eyes. Both of them pause with several dozen meters between them and her, seeming content to stay at a distance.

The lighter one cocks its head at an angle and wags its tail slowly from side to side, the picture of innocence. The darker one hasn't moved its eyes off her face, or off her gun perhaps, and is whining lowly in its throat.

Taking the risk that the two animals won't attack immediately Furiosa lifts her eyes from them to scan the horizon for more movement, but all is still. She debates addressing the hypothetical owner of the creatures, for they seem far too used to humans to be wild, but decides against making noise and prompting an attack. Slowly she steps towards her bike, wishing she had the security of a car's steel body to put between the beasts and her, not once lowering her gun.

The animals don't move closer, though the pale one's tail stops wagging and it looks almost dejected, matching the generally miserable air of the darker one.

She has to lower her gun to get the bike started and it makes her vulnerable, but still no attack comes. Instead the creatures remain where they're standing and watch with their eerie eyes as she makes her escape.

Mournful howls follow her as she speeds away from the beasts, but if they trail her they stay well out of sight.

  


“It's dogs,” Furiosa tells the girls the next night when the howling starts up again, “I saw them.”

“I knew it! Was there a man with a gun lurking behind them?” Toast asks.

“What did they look like?” Capable asks at almost the same time.

“No men,” Furiosa replies to the far too excited seeming Toast, “And they were like a dingo but big, covered in long fur. They came close to where I was but didn't attack, so I don't know if they're feral or not.”

“We should befriend them,” The Dag suggests, “You have a way with wild creatures.”

“Don't!” Cheedo interjects, “Bad enough that she even got close enough to see them. We should just wait for them to leave, like you said earlier.”

“I wish I'd seen them,” Capable says, “I saw a dog once but it was small, and then we had to eat it.”

“No wonder you think dogs are extinct, if your response to seeing one is to eat it,” Toast says teasingly, and the conversation devolves into joking and laughter.

Furiosa ponders the Dag's suggestion, considers what the cost of taming the beasts would be versus the benefits gained by having such imposing animals at her beck and call. But the howls stop before she's made a decision, and she instead determines to put it out of her mind.

  


When the first night of the full moon come around again it brings with it the unearthly noise of howling carried on the wind. It sounds almost as close as it had the night she encountered the beasts and Furiosa impulsively make a decision. She'll take her bike out and see if she can either entice them within roping distance or chase them away for good. Thus resolved, she grabs a coil of rope and a small pouch of dried lizard meat on her way out to the vehicle bay where her ride is kept.

Midnight rides aren't technically forbidden but they're not exactly encouraged either, and since she doesn't want to answer questions about her motives she takes care to stay quiet, walking her bike out past the groups of Wretched huddled near the towers. Riding at night is a wholly different experience than navigating the road during the day. Even with the light of the moon and a headlamp it's far more treacherous, and she can't help but move slowly.

From her left shapes detach from the shadows, soon resolving into the two beasts from before. The lighter one is yipping as it runs, tail wagging hard and seemingly delighted to see her again. Neither makes a move to attack her, apparently content to run besides her bike. Perhaps they really did use to be someone's pets.

She slows her bike to a stop when they reach a fairly flat stretch of dirt, one hand on her gun at all times. The animals halt with her, keeping a good amount of distance between them as before.

“Good dogs,” she says, feeling a bit foolish as she does so. “I have some food with me. You can probably smell it, but you didn't attack me for any of it so I'm willing to share.”

The animals lick their chops as she says this, and she takes it as a sign that they recognize the word food, making the theory of them being somewhat used to humans more likely. Keeping her movements slow she reaches into the pouch of jerky, tears a piece in two and then throws them in the direction of the animals.

The light colored dog instantly pounces on the piece nearest it, but the darker one whirls around to face its partner, growling and stopping the pale dog before it can take a bite. Furiosa has never been close enough, nor had the inclination, to observe the few dingo packs that range the wastelands so she has no idea what to expect as the darker dog bristles at the other.

The lighter beast backs away with a whine, hunching its shoulders low. The darker one stops growling and whines in return, some strange type of dog communication taking place that she can't decipher. Whatever offense the pale dog gave it seems to be forgiven a moment later, and they sniff at the jerky warily before snapping it up into their jaws.

“See? Good meat, nothing bad in it,” Furiosa says soothingly. She wonders if the dogs can be enticed to come close enough to be in reach of her rope, and throws some more bites of jerky slightly closer to her.

The darker dog steps forward cautiously, sniffing the meat while keeping its strange eyes on her face. The lighter one follows a second later, seemingly more interested in getting the meat without a scolding than in figuring out whatever game she's playing.

“There you go,” she continues to lightly speak nonsense at the animals, tossing shreds of meat towards them while calculating the distance. The darker one seems to be the leader of the two, that much is obvious, and she thinks that if she can get it tied up the other will follow.

As if sensing her motive the dogs pause the second her hand goes for the rope she has coiled on the side of her bike, ears pricked forward and eyes glowing eerily. Their reaction gives her pause in turn, and it becomes a stand off as neither she nor they move for a long stretch of moments.

Finally Furiosa decides to just go for it and picks up the rope, but as soon as she does the dogs turn tail and flee. The darker one looks back at her as they reach the top of a nearby dune, and she thinks she sees something like disappointment in its eyes, which is obviously proof that she's losing her mind.

  


The next night has Furiosa back on her bike almost the second she hears the howls start up again. She forgoes the rope, deciding that if they're as smart as they seem she should gain their trust first before trying to capture them again.

“Hey there,” she says when she sees the two shaggy animals appear out of the shadows again, having stopped her bike at the same place as the night before. “No rope this time, just more meat.”

The night goes much the same as the last, with the dogs slowly accepting meat tossed closer and closer to herself. They're still a few meters away when she runs out of jerky, but they're close enough now for her to see that they are both male.

“Boys,” Furiosa says with some amusement, “Doesn't that figure. Women take over the Citadel and men roam the wastes.” It's eerie the way the animals seem to actually listen to her, as if they understand what she's saying. Perhaps all animals were once like that, back when they were more than just hunted for food, but there's no way to know.

Again the next night the pattern repeats, her talking to the dogs in low tones and feeding them small bits of meat. She's had to take up hunting for lizards in what little spare time she has to justify the extravagance, but seeing the beasts creep ever closer with neither fear nor aggression in their eyes is somehow rewarding enough repayment.

  


The fourth night she doesn't hear howling but heads out anyway only to be greeted with empty sands on all sides. The moon is only a trifle dimmer but the night seems colder, indifferent. She didn't realize how much enjoyment she was getting out of watching the animals until they declined to appear.

“I would ask if it's dreams, but I don't think you've been sleeping at all.” the Dag says by way of greeting when Furiosa returns to the Citadel that night, having given up on catching a glimpse of the animals.

“I took your advice about those dogs,” Furiosa replies, “Last few nights I heard them howling so I went out and fed them. Guess they must have had their fill because they're gone again.” She all but throws the satchel containing the meat she was going to feed them, not sure if she's mad at herself for getting caught up in caring for them.

The Dag nods her head as she hears this. “Perhaps they're scared of being tamed,” she offers, and Furiosa can't help but snort in reply.

“They're just animals,” she says, “And if they aren't wild shouldn't they want to be with humans again anyway?”

“Not all humans are kind,” the Dag reminds her, as if that was something any of them could forget.

“Well whatever the reason, they're gone now. So I guess I won't be missing out on my sleep anymore.”

  


The moon cycles to empty and back to full before Furiosa hears howling again. She's starting to sense a pattern, wonders if the animals are traveling between different areas across the month.

She doesn't even get as far as her bike before seeing them this time. The beasts are lurking in the dunes just past the unofficial town line, easy to reach on foot.

“Hello again,” she says to them as they make their way further from the tower's base, feeling something warm in her chest when they allow her to approach closer than they ever had before. “I wasn't sure you'd be coming back.”

The light dog yips happily, as nonthreatening as ever, and she takes the huge risk of sitting down in the sand. Without her feet under her she's lost a major advantage, but she does still have her gun if things go south. It takes almost no time at all before the dogs are nearly close enough to touch, and she realizes that she has gravely underestimated their sizes. Furiosa is not a short woman by any stretch, but they tower over her like this.

“Easy, be good now boys,” she finds herself keeping up a steady stream of nonsense as they approach, suddenly unsure if this idea was a good one.

The light colored dog yawns exaggeratedly as he nears, and his white teeth gleam in the moonlight. This close she can see that he has scars all over his face, as if he's accustomed to fighting. It's the dark dog who first takes a piece of meat directly from her outstretched hand, sniffing curiously at her metal prosthesis before delicately taking the jerky. To her surprise he lays down in the sand not a meter away, eyes on her as he worries at the snack.

This seems to be some signal to the white dog because he's in her face the next instant, tongue lolling out of his mouth and tail wagging hard enough to vibrate his entire backside.

“Whoa boy, that breath is dangerous!” Furiosa is unable to contain her grin, pleased to have apparently won the animals over at last. The white dog dances around her exuberantly for a moment before darting off, and returning a minute later with what looks like a chunk of plastic, badly worn down and covered in teeth marks. He drops it at her feet and lowers his front half to the sand, tail waving like a flag above him. The darker dog huffs loudly, and looks like he would be rolling his eyes if he was able.

“For me?” she asks uncertainly, not sure what the significance of the gesture is. The dog yips, picking up the plastic again only to toss it away a short distance. He pounces on the plastic immediately and brings it back to her, dropping it again in front of her folded legs.

“You want me to throw it,” she guesses. Gingerly she picks up the chunk of plastic, wary of what his reaction might be if she seems to disrespect his gift. She mimes throwing it and he barks happily, so she risks giving it a short toss.

The dog bounds away after it, bringing it back just as quickly. It brings a smile to her face and she throws the plastic further out the next time, to his apparent delight.

“You don't play games?” she asks the other dog, who hasn't moved from his spot. He thumps his tail against the sand and whines lowly in his throat but doesn't get up to join in, instead continuing to just take everything in with his uncanny eyes.

Furiosa spends more time than she'll admit to throwing the toy for the lighter dog to fetch, his delight seemingly undiminished until he at last collapsed into the sand next to his partner, panting heavily in surrender.

She returns late to the Citadel with a small smile stuck to her face, uncaring that she's completely missed out on sleep for the night. Toast keeps watching her accusingly throughout the day, finally breaking down and demanding to know if she's got a lover stashed away somewhere.

“You'd tell us if you had a man, right?”

“There's no one,” Furiosa reassures her with badly-concealed mirth. Toast narrows her eyes disbelievingly, but she's cut off by the Dag, who knows close enough to the truth to guess the real reason for her good humor.

“It's just her special time of the month,” she says, which is not at all what Furiosa expected to hear, and then follows up her remark with a short mimicry of the howls they've grown accustomed to hearing. She swats at the girl's shoulder lightly in return while Toast sighs exasperatedly.

“Fine, keep your secrets,” she says, “I'll figure it out eventually.”

  


To her surprise, that next night the dark dog joins in with the lighter one's play. They race after the piece of plastic together and tussle good-naturedly, never seeming to actually hurt the other though the growling does become fierce at times. As they frolic around in the bright moonlight Furiosa can tell that the darker beast is favoring one of his hind legs, occasionally pausing to lick at the joint with an air of embarrassment. It's obviously not bad enough to hinder him significantly judging by the fact that he's still alive, but she wonders if it causes him pain.

The darker dog curls up before long almost next to her in the sand, apparently having had enough excitement for the night. He seems older than the other who is childish in his lack of restraint; paradoxically more cautious by far but still the first one to make any advances.

Cautiously she reaches out her flesh hand towards the dog who regards her with a steady, almost glowing gaze, prepared to snatch her hand back at the first sign of displeasure.

“You're alright,” she croons, lowering her fingers until they're just barely in contact with the edges of his fur. “Nothing to worry about. Just a little touch.” When he doesn't react she reaches a little further into the fur behind his ears, moving her fingers in small circles as she rubs his skin. It's not like hair at all really, the texture strangely plush and unfamiliar. Slowly his eyes drift closed, head seeming to push the slightest bit into the caress as he relaxes.

The light dog of course chooses that moment to come bounding up with the plastic piece in his jaws, breaking the spell. The darker one snaps his eyes back open, stiffening under her rapidly retreating fingers.

The pattern they've established continues unabated for two more moon cycles, with Furiosa bribing them with more and more meat until they both accept her hand gently stroking their fur. She debates the merits of trying a rope again but never seems to grab it on her way out to the sands.

Toast is completely sure that she has a lover by now, and since she finds herself loathe to divulge the real reason for her midnight treks, Furiosa accepts the ribbing it earns her.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm too flustered/brainweird right now to answer comments directly but thank you all for the kind words, it means a lot to me and I'm thrilled that y'all are enjoying this fic so far!
> 
> As a warning: this chapter contains semi-graphic animal harm and animal death on par with canon.

One night not long after the Dag finally gives birth she breaks their established pattern. Furiosa has been feeling restless all day and when the howling starts up she decides to take her motorcycle for a spin, wanting to feel the air moving over her skin.

The dogs are hesitant when she first approaches, having not seen her bike in more than a hundred days, but soon accept the mechanical beast as harmless.

“You boys up for a run?” she asks, distributing snatches of meat and ear scratches as she makes sure they're not spooked by the sound of her running motor. The pale one barks in reply, eyes alight, and she kicks off.

The dogs look confused at first when she starts riding away but with a few shouted encouragements they begin loping alongside her as they head out into the night.

It's far from the first time Furiosa has taken a set of wheels out for a joyride but this is the first time she's done so with company. It's strangely soothing to have the dogs along instead of just the sand and sky. The animals besides her can't fill the air with chatter, won't pass judgment on her if she does want to vent. They spend some time just racing along the sand, her headlamp pointed towards the yellow moon where it hangs fat above the horizon.

Movement catches her eye, something small rocketing out of the shadows of a dune as they approach. The dogs perk up immediately as all their attention is taken up by whatever it is. They speed up as they give chase and Furiosa finds herself wishing she had brought a crossbow instead of a pistol.

On her own she would have no chance at catching whatever the fleeing creature is, but with the two dogs she thinks it's possible. They would have had to feed themselves before she came along after all, and she can't imagine them skulking around human settlements for scraps, as wary as they are.

“Get it!” she yells in encouragement, following at a slower pace as she picks her way across the moon-washed landscape. They range ahead of her, the small creature gaining and losing ground as it dodges in seemingly random patterns, the two dogs following with single-minded determination. The paler one takes the lead, occasionally baying in delight when he runs near enough to take a snap. Furiosa surprises herself by echoing the dogs' cries, whooping as if she was the one running it down. Soon they disappear out of sight, running up and over a large sand dune.

There's a high-pitched noise not unlike a scream and as she crests the hill she can see the dogs have managed to catch the animal in the valley below her.

“That's it boys!” she yells, bringing her bike to a halt a few meters away. She leaves the headlamp on to illuminate the scene and heads for the dogs, wanting to see for herself what the creature was. To her surprise the dogs whirl on her as she approaches, growling and flashing their eerie eyes but not advancing to attack.

“Hey now,” she says, hands held up in front of her reflexively, wondering whether she should draw her gun, “It's just me.” Neither of them backs down, growling one long continuous note, until the lighter of the two snaps at the dark dog. Distracted by this the darker dog turns away from her, and the two beasts scuffle with each other.

Furiosa retreats to her motorcycle but doesn't drive off, feeling a wave of shocky adrenaline wash over her. It's not that she had forgotten that these were feral creatures, but she'd grown used to them acting tame. Apparently she'd gotten too complacent if she felt brave enough to basically snatch food out of their mouths after they had run it down fair and square.

The fight winds down only moments later, the two dogs making up with whimpers and wagging tails. She stays seated on her bike as her heart slowly stops racing, wanting the distance even if she's fairly sure they won't attack her now that she's backed off.

The duo tear into the creature the caught while Furiosa calms herself down from the adrenaline of chasing and being threatened. She thinks it was a rabbit that they found, but it was hard to tell when it was running so quickly, and there won't be enough of it left to identify when the dogs are through.

The dark dog starts to move towards her and she tenses, but it's wagging its tail side to side slowly and seems to have forgiven her for trying to take away his meal. The pale dog stays near where the creature was felled, eyes glowing as he watches the two of them.

“Steady boy,” she says softly. The dog whines, and walks close enough for her to see that it's got something in its mouth. “What's that?” Talking to the animals has become a habit over the moon cycles, more for her benefit more than theirs, and now it helps her feel more even-footed.

He drops whatever it is onto the sand and nudges it in her direction with his nose before taking a step back. Furiosa leans down to pick it up with her prosthetic hand, seeing as she does so that it's a leg from the creature they killed.

“Thank you,” she says reflexively, startled by the gift. The dog wags his tail more emphatically, and she smiles at him, pleased that there seem to be no hard feelings. Eating raw meat isn't something she particularly enjoys but she's far from unused to it, and she's wary of rejecting the gift right after the turmoil she caused. Wiping off some of the sand with her organic hand she can tell that it's still warm, and blood flows out of the meat when she takes a bite.

As she eats the gamey flesh the pale dog bounds over, tail wagging hard enough to shake his frame and carrying the mangled pelt of the animal in his jaws. He flails it around in the air until the darker one snaps at it and a game of chase starts up. When she finishes stripping the meat away Furiosa offers the bone to the dogs, the dark one delicately picking it up before crunching down.

Between their ambling trip out and the the hunt itself they've spent several hours out on the sands, and Furiosa knows she needs to head back if she intends to make it home before sunrise. “Ready to go?” she asks the animals, starting up her motorcycle again. The pale one keeps hold of his scrap of fur as they run, occasionally earning a halfhearted snap from the the darker animal when he shakes it teasingly near the other's head. They're slower in returning, tired from the chase, and the darker dog's leg seems to be troubling him more than it has in a while.

As they pass a rocky outcropping a strange noise starts up, similar in some ways to the dog's howling but higher pitched, distorted sounding and filled with short sharp calls. Chills run down her spine as she steers away from the racket, not wanting to find out the source of the cries. The dogs keep close, ears and tails tucked down tightly until they're well beyond the structure and the noise has faded away.

“All sorts of creatures out tonight,” Furiosa mutters to herself, half wondering if the old tales about full moons bringing trouble have any truth to them after all.

They reach the outskirts of the Citadel without further incident however, the dogs melting away into the shadows after one last ear scratch. Some day she'll see about bringing out a rope again but for now she thinks she's content interacting on their terms.

  


But the next night is what radically changes their pattern. Rather than howls echoing across the dunes there's frantic barking coming from the vehicle bay's entrance that she normally uses for her nighttime wanderings. Furiosa was already on her way when the noise started, the clamor drawing the attention of the no-longer-Wretched who are crowding around the bay.

“What is that thing?” A young one asks, fearfully pointing at the lighter dog who's frenetically pacing and barking as Furiosa arrives. In the comparatively bright lights of the bay she can clearly see for the first time that its fur is not quite a true white but speckled gray and tan; the uncanny eyes are the same piercing blue.

“That's a wolf,” someone older replies, “They used to exist Before.”

“It's a dog,” Furiosa corrects, kneeling down to try and calm said dog down to figure out what the matter is. She's certain that it wouldn't come so close to humans without there being a good cause, and her heart lurches when she realizes that its darker companion is nowhere to be seen.

“It's a _wolf_ ,” the elderly Wretched asserts, “I saw them in a zoo once. They're like dogs, but wild.”

“I don't like it,” the child says in a small voice, turning away from the animal fearfully. Furiosa declines to argue the point further- dog or wolf, what difference does it make? It trusts her enough to seek her out when something has gone wrong, and that's what matters.

“Okay boy,” Furiosa says quietly to the animal, who has stopped barking and now quivers with restrained energy. “Something's happened to him, hasn't it? I need you to lead me there. Just let me grab a med kit.”

The pale beast whines pathetically but allows her to stand and rummage through the vehicle bay's storage. Med kits are a new addition to their supplies now that they're trying to discourage fatalities but not all crews have accepted them readily, so they're often discarded in odd places. She finds one and after checking to make sure it's filled she straps it to her motorcycle.

“Ready,” she tells the animal by her side, starting the motor and ignoring the noises the people around her are making. There will probably be five different versions of this story come daybreak, and some distant part of her looks forward to hearing what strange fabrications they come up with.

The dog races ahead of her as Furiosa peels out of the bay and into the night. He keeps up with the bike easily, long legs eating up the terrain as he directs her to a rocky area almost an hour away from the Citadel's towers, not far from where the strange noises came the night before.

Finally he slows, letting out a particularly sad-sounding howl as she brakes and dismounts. There's no answering howl and he whines, her own heart clenching in sympathy and worry. After some searching she finds that the darker dog has wedged himself into a crevice between two rocks, and it takes Furiosa a few minutes to be sure that he's even breathing.

“Hey boy,” she calls softly, “It's just me.” The animal whines lowly, his eyes slitting open but not seeming to focus on her. “I'm going to try and get you out of there, okay?” The lighter dog crowds around her, whining in obvious distress.

“Hey,” she says to the white dog, “I need you to stay back. I know you're worried but I need space right now.” She's still not sure how much the animals understand but with a gentle push he stands aside, leaving enough room for her to work freely in.

“I know, I know,” she keeps up a steady stream of soothing nonsense as she carefully extracts the dog from his hiding place. The area he was lying is dark with blood and she curses, unsure how to proceed when her patient is covered with fur and she didn't think to bring a lantern.

The med kit is mostly gauze and bandages, along with small bottles of things like alcohol for disinfection and herbal compounds for pain relief. She has no idea what might be safe for him so she settles for just cleaning the wounds she can see, apologizing for the harsh sting with each swipe. The dog doesn't react much at all to the pain she must be causing, and she worries about what that means for his survival odds.

There are several gashes on him, the worst being a long jagged one across his abdomen that just narrowly avoided gutting him. He's not bleeding heavily which she doesn't think is a good sign under the circumstances.

“I know you don't think so but you lucked out my friend,” Furiosa tells him as she gingerly probes the thin covering of tissue holding his guts in, “A little deeper and you wouldn't have a chance.”

When she's finished wiping the worst of the grit out of the gash she wraps bandages around his middle, hoping they hold well enough for him to survive the journey back on her motorcycle.

“Now the hard part,” she says, eyeing the bulk of his body and wishing she had thought to grab a car instead of her usual motorcycle. “I have to lift you, okay?” The other dog had been dutifully hanging back as she worked but now he surges forward, butting his head against the darker dog gently.

They both whine, the dark one rousing enough to open his eyes again and lift his head off the earth. This time he does focus on Furiosa, and she thinks he understands well enough what the next step will be. She packs the remnants of the med kit away before sliding her arms underneath him, careful not to let her prosthesis pinch in his long fur.

The dog is a massive weight and she staggers a little as she stands, but keeps her hold. Getting him arranged onto the bike is a challenge but eventually he's spread out on his side over the gas tank and handlebars, more or less stable.

“Come on, we need to get him to someone who actually knows medicine,” Furiosa says to the light colored dog needlessly. The return trip is even more of a blur, her focus on keeping the dog from slipping off the bike with every jolt and hoping that the rough treatment isn't overwhelming for him.

  


There's a small crowd gathered in front of the vehicle bay despite the late hour, evidently drawn by the fuss raised when she left. She deposits the dog carefully onto a cot in the corner, not wanting to bring him all the way to the proper surgery. He's still breathing which is reassuring, but he stopped responding to even the roughest thumps a while ago and she feels something akin to panic settle into her gut. The other dog sits down on the floor next to the cot, his head lying next to the dark one's and nudging him ever so gently.

“Find me a medic,” she instructs of one of the former War Boys hanging about, turning to another she says “I need water, lots of it.” They scurry off, too used to following orders to question the necessity of medical care for an animal.

A gentle hand lands on Furiosa's shoulder and she turns to see the Dag, infant daughter held in a sling across her body. She says nothing, just nods her head understandingly. Which is almost funny to think, because Furiosa herself doesn't understand her reaction or the attachment it implies. It's just an animal, if anything she should have dealt it a mercy blow and rejoiced in having gained such a large a source of meat.

“That's certainly not a man,” Toast says as she steps closer, eyeing the dogs warily.

“Told you,” the Dag replies, “If our Furiosa goes for a man she won't hide it.”

The War Boy tasked with getting water returns, a large pail sloshing onto the floor. He sets it down by the cot and carefully backs away, looking almost as scared of the dogs as Cheedo in the corner does. Furiosa unwraps the lesser wounds to begin more thoroughly cleaning them out, not wanting to disturb the bandage on the dog's largest gash when she doesn't know the damage she might cause.

The dark dog rouses slightly as she runs water over the wounds, and she picks up her stream of soft words unthinkingly. “Shh, you're alright. It's safe here, it'll be okay.”

A medic appears, looking disgruntled to be disturbed so late at night. “What's this about an animal?” he snaps unsympathetically.

“He's hurt worse than I know how to deal with,” Furiosa says, “A gut wound.”

“Slit its throat and be done with it,” the medic replies, “You're wasting my time.”

The pale dog lifts his head off the cot and growls at him, baring his sharp white teeth. Furiosa shushes him with a quick hand gesture, not taking her eyes off the medic. “You will do your best to heal this animal,” she says firmly, “because it is what your Imperator wants.”

The medic narrows his eyes at her in annoyance but acquiesces with a nod, washing his hands quickly before brusquely cutting away the bandages wrapped around the dog's middle. The wound looks even worse under the bright lights, bloody red flesh contrasting starkly with his dark fur. The dog doesn't stir under the medic's rough hands as he cleans the gash and sets about sewing closed the worst of it.

Furiosa finds that her organic fingers have sunk into the pale dog's fur as she watches the man work, both of them focused on his hands as they stitch the dark dog closed.

“What happened?” she asks the dog nonsensically, “I didn't think there were any predators big enough to take you on out there.”

The pale dog whines, licking her fingers in lieu of an answer. She thinks again of the strange noises from the night before, imagines what sort of creature they might have belonged to. If they were powerful enough to take down her two companions she shudders to think about them getting bold enough to attack the settlement.

Soon enough the medic is finished, having closed the worst of the other wounds as well. “Keep it clean, give it plenty of water, keep it from moving and the animal might live.” He sweeps out of the room without another word.

“Where did they come from?” Capable asks after the silence stretches on for a while, cautiously approaching the pale dog with an outstretched hand. “I haven't seen dogs in years.”

“I don't know,” Furiosa replies, her flesh hand having migrated to the fur of the darker dog. In the light she can finally see that it's a yellowish brown color, not black as the moonlight made it appear. “We all heard the howling and then I stumbled on them when I was out on a patrol. I think they had an owner once, it took a while for them to trust me but they've been very tame.”

The pale dog has progressed from sniffing Capable's hand to licking it, which she seems less than enthused about.

“Stranger things have blown in from the wastes,” the Dag says as she takes in the scene.

Cheedo is the first to leave, apologetic but clearly uncomfortable being around the animals. Toast follows shortly thereafter, with Capable reluctantly leaving only when she can't keep her eyes open between yawns. The Dag offers to stay but Furiosa assures her that she'll be fine, not wanting to keep the infant in her arms awake and unwilling to risk her friend's safety should the dog react poorly upon waking.

“Don't worry,” the Dag says as she heads for the hallway, “He'll come back to you.”

Furiosa sits on the floor next to the cot, finally thinking to take her prosthesis off of her aching shoulders. The paler dog curls up next to her, his head ending up in her lap while he dozes fitfully. The darker dog lies still but she places her hand on his rib cage and feels the steady breaths he's pulling in.

  



	3. Chapter 3

The rising sun is just beginning to spill light into the vehicle bay, illuminating the dogs' fur in strange new shades when it happens. Between one blink and the next the two more-or-less-peacefully sleeping dogs are replaced by men, naked but for wisps of shed fur that clings to their skin.

The shock of it freezes Furiosa in place, sure that she's slipped into a dream without noticing. The man in her lap stirs and opens his eyes, blinking blearily before seeming to come truly awake.

“Glory be- Furiosa!” he exclaims, and she knows that voice. He's devoid of war paint and his hair is longer but the face is the same, intricate scars in the same positions she remembers.

“Nux?” she asks, unsure she believes her eyes. “But- you're dead.” A dream is the only way to explain how a dead man came to be sprawled out in her lap, but a quick glance at her own arm suggests otherwise- her mind always dreams of her arm being whole, not the stump it really is.

He huffs out a laugh, grinning up at her before leveraging himself off the ground. “I nearly was! But blood-bag here saved me again, and fixed me up right shiny! I'll have to let him do the telling, I wasn't awake for half of it.” He turns to the man on the cot to rouse him, and Furiosa realizes that it's their fool Max who's lying there in place of the second dog, looking far too pale and haggard beneath his bandages.

“Blood-bag?” Nux sounds concerned, shaking the man's shoulder with a little more force. Furiosa's arm hadn't slipped off his chest when he changed shapes and she can still feel it rising and falling as he breathes, reassuringly steady.

“He was hurt real bad,” she says, “Don't you remember?”

“No, I can't remember much when I change,” Nux says, brow furrowing in worry. “He's been a wolf for much longer so he can remember almost everything, it's only been a few months for me. But he said we heal quickly so I don't know why he wouldn't be fine...”

Furiosa is still reeling, but she at least knows that no medic would turn down a human patient, even if he had been an animal moments earlier. “You'll explain everything when we get a minute; first I need to get him seen by a healer. You should probably find some pants.”

Even as early as the hour is there's always someone awake, and it doesn't take long for a medic to be summoned. The man from the night before is off shift so it's the Vuvalini healer who appears, toting a bag of supplies.

“Last I heard you had an animal down here that needed looking after,” the old woman says as she heads for the cot, “But this looks to me like a human.”

“I'd explain if I knew what was going on, but I need him looked at to see if there's anything wrong,” Furiosa replies, retaking her seat on the floor. “Nux says he should have healed already and last I saw they were both dogs, so I'm inclined to believe him.”

“Hmm,” the medic hums as she sets about working, unperturbed by the idea of it, “I remember stories about people who turn into animals and back. Not many happy endings.”

“We can worry about that when we know he'll make it through this,” Furiosa says. The wounds underneath his bandages look twisted and wrong, and the medic tuts as she reaches for a pair of delicate scissors.

“Last night of the full moon?” she asks seemingly at random as she begins snipping away the sutures.

“Yesterday,” Nux replies, hanging back but clearly wanting to be of some help. Furiosa idly notes that he did manage to find a pair of ragged shorts, which is probably for the best.

“Can you fetch more water?” she asks, indicating the murky pail by the cot. The former War Boy jumps to the task eagerly, scurrying down the hallway in search of a spigot. She watches the medic work for a while in silence before giving in to the urge to ask about the patient's status. “How is he?”

“He's lost a lot of blood,” the healer replies, “Don't suppose you have any universal donors lying around?”

She can only shake her head. “He's the only living one I know of,” she replies, “There's an O-positive out among the people somewhere but that's not much help.”

“Shame,” she replies, “We'll just have to hope that pup was right about being hardy.”

The boy in question returns with fresh water, setting it down reverently near the cot. The medic has her hands full repairing the damage Max's body did to itself when he changed forms, and since nothing the two of them do at this point can help, Furiosa decides to ask what the hell is going on.

“Explain to me how it is that you're alive, first of all, and second of all why both of you were dogs less than an hour ago.”

“We're wolves, not dogs,” Nux says a little petulantly, as if she cares about the distinction. “Blood-bag said he's something called a werewolf, it means he turns into a wolf on the nights of the full moon. I was trapped in the War Rig, fourth chance at Valhalla you know, when he found me. There's something he can do, he didn't really explain, but it turns a normal person into a werewolf too.

“However it works, he turned me into one once he'd pulled me out of the wreck, which saved my life. Werewolves heal faster, which is why he did it, otherwise I'd have died for sure,” he pauses, looking at Max's direction forlornly. “He said we were a pack, and he'd teach me to control myself when I turned into a wolf. It'd be easy to hurt someone when I'm like that, everything is just so- so _real_.”

She doesn't know what to think about most of it, but Furiosa considers how many moons have passed since they took the Citadel, how long she's known the two humans-as-wolves. Either Max had seriously overstated the dangers to get Nux's compliance, or the two are just not as violent as the man feared.

“You never once tried to hurt me,” Furiosa tells him.

“I don't really remember much but you were nice, brought us food. And I knew your smell already so it wasn't so hard.”

“And you don't remember anything about last night?”

“No, last I remember is setting camp for the night and then waking up here.”

Furiosa had hoped for more information but doesn't think any more will be forthcoming. The wounds were savage, and it seems likely that they were caused by whatever creatures had been making the eerie noises she'd heard the night before. Humans probably would have shot and killed the both of them for meat rather than risk the close-quarters fight the gashes suggest took place. But if Nux couldn't remember what happened and with Max unconscious, there was no way to be sure.

“That should do it,” the Vuvalini healer says, finishing a line of neat stitches on Max's side. After winding the last bandage around his middle she drapes a rough blanket over his body, covering his nakedness which hadn't even registered with everything else going on.

“His heart's steadier,” Nux says, surprising the two of them as his hands are held in his own lap, not resting near any of the other man's pulse points. He seems to pick up on the confusion because he adds with a shrug, “I can hear it. Your senses get ramped up, smell and hearing mostly. I don't really know how any of it works.”

“Well, there's nothing more I can do for him,” the medic says, cleaning off her hands. “If he wakes try to give him water and broth, he'll need to replace his blood.”

“Thank you,” Furiosa says, briefly clasping hands with the older woman in gratitude before she leaves the vehicle bay.

After taking a steadying breath she turns to Nux. “You should talk to the sisters, they'll want to know that you're both alive. Have one of the Pups show you the way. Then, take a few people and a set of wheels and go collect whatever you and Max have at your camp, before someone else finds it. You'll both be staying here at least until he's on his feet.”

“Max?” Nux asks with a tilt of his head that would look right at home on his other form.

“The fool's name,” she says with an exasperated wave. “You can't have been calling him a blood-bag the entire time you were out there.”

Nux turns away rather than answer, awkwardly scratching at the back of his neck and flushing with embarrassment. She's not surprised really, she herself only learned his name when she was presumably dying. As the boy leaves the vehicle bay it occurs to her that if Max had saved Nux's life by turning him into a “werewolf” that he might have considered doing the same for her as well, if the transfusion hadn't worked.

Furiosa turns her attention to the man lying on the cot, unsure how to handle the fact that up until an hour ago he was just a creature she'd befriended, and now he was back to being the man that helped her overtake the Citadel. She wouldn't believe the transformation if she hadn't seen it with her own eyes, and by now she's assured that she is most definitely awake.

Rather than going to see the women on his own Nux seems to have sent someone to collect them, because he returns after only a few minutes and crouches at the other end of the cot, a hand resting on Max's ankle. Furiosa realizes abruptly that she hasn't moved from her position next to the unconscious man, has even threaded her fingers through his hair as if he was still covered in fur.

“So there _was_ a man,” Toast says smugly as she enters the vehicle bay, “I knew it was a decoy...” Her voice trails off as she takes in the room in more detail, recognition setting in.

Cheedo gasps from besides her, and Capable has gone as white as a painted War Boy when she sees the men. Only the Dag seems to be without surprise, apparently unconcerned by the presence of men presumed to be dead in place of the animals from last night.

“Capable?” Nux asks quietly, attention completely overtaken up by her arrival.

“You're dead,” she replies in an equally small and shaky voice, “I saw you die. You can't be here. Not- no...” Capable trails off, hands coming up to cover her mouth. She begins slowly backing out of the room, wide eyes not leaving Nux's face.

“Wait!” Nux calls after her, clambering to his feet and staring at where she disappeared. He looks back at Max lying on the cot and seems torn, but Furiosa nods and the boy takes off like a shot, calling the redhead's name as he hurries to catch up to her.

“What's going on?” Toast asks, cautiously approaching the cot.

“I'm not really sure myself,” Furiosa replies. “The two of them can apparently change into animals somehow; they were the dogs from last night. The fool saved Nux by turning him into- I think he said it was called a werewolf- because he'd be able to heal faster. He doesn't remember much of anything though.”

“Is he going to be okay?” Cheedo asks, tentatively reaching out to put a hand on the unconscious Max's forehead. Furiosa has no answer for her, the wounds were deep and she assumes that transforming from animal to human takes a substantial amount of energy.

Toast looks like she wants to ask for more information, not that Furiosa knows much more, but is interrupted by a noise from Max as he shifts in place.

“I think he's coming around,” says Cheedo unnecessarily, scooting away from the cot so she's out of striking range in case he startles.

“Hey,” Furiosa picks back up the soft nonsense she had been saying back when he was just a dog, “You're okay here. It's safe.”

Max lets out what can only be called a whimper before stilling, and she thinks maybe he's gone under again, but his eyes slit open.

“You with us?” Furiosa asks him as the Dag approaches with a tin cup of water. He closes his eyes but nods, and together she and Cheedo shift his torso somewhat upright so that he's able to drink.

“Do you know where you are?” she asks next, when he's downed the cup and reopened his eyes.

Max nods again but then suddenly whines high in his throat as movement jars his injuries, sounding exactly the same as when he was covered in fur. His eyes scrunch shut as he weakly tries to cover his abdomen with his hands before stilling.

“You lost a lot of blood,” Furiosa finds herself saying inanely, voice soft, “We weren't sure if you would make it.”

He doesn't reply at all to this, face already smoothing out as he loses consciousness again. They lower him back to the cot gently.

“Should we move him to the infirmary?” Toast asks.

“He used to be a blood-bag,” Furiosa replies with a shake of her head, “If he wakes up and recognizes the place... We'll bring him upstairs, he can stay with one of us.”

  


With the help of a few War Boys to carry the cot, they eventually install Max in an empty room near to where they all sleep. A second pallet is brought in for Nux when he returns, and they each agree to take turns watching over the unconscious man in the meantime.

Toast elects to take the first watch which leaves Furiosa at loose ends. There's always something to be done somewhere, but she wanders from task to task distractedly as the reality of the situation catches up with her.

Max had always seemed a bit like a feral creature, silent and skittish, but she certainly didn't expect for the analogy to become so literal. Knowing that he was one of the dogs, that he willingly kept so large a secret from her, sets her off balance. Furiosa had gotten into the habit of talking to the dogs, never anything too personal but more than she would have shared if she thought her words had any way of being understood. Nux seems to genuinely not remember anything beyond that it was her they were meeting, but he implied that Max was able to recall far more.

The Dag finds her idly tweaking one of the irrigation pumps around midday and watches her work for a while, saying nothing.

“Was there something you wanted?” Furiosa asks after a while, turning away from her project when it becomes clear that the Dag has no intention of leaving.

“Are you worried, or are you mad?” she says by way of reply, tattooed fingers reaching into the damp soil fed by the pump.

Furiosa thinks it over, then says, “Why can't I be both?”

“Capable is mad, she thinks Nux should have told us he was alive sooner.”

“He should have. If it wasn't safe for them to be around humans, they should have left instead of moving closer.”

The Dag hums in response, draws shapes in the earth. “Maybe they couldn't leave,” she says.

“Unlikely,” Furiosa replies, finishing the last tweak and turning the pump back on. It chugs to life, drawing water up from a reservoir underneath the rock it sits on and sending it along to the waiting system of pipes.

“I have a feeling they'll stay.”

“Nux will, now he remembers what easy access to water looks like- if Capable forgives him.” Furiosa pauses, contemplates what she knows about Max, his many contradictions. “The Fool is as likely to leave as not. Maybe he'll stay for a time, maybe he'll sneak out soon as he can walk.”

The Dag doesn't have anything else to say it seems, continuing instead to draw symbols and erase them while Furiosa listens to the steady hum of the pump's motor.

“Nux is back,” she announces after finishing a particularly complex pattern, “And I think Max will be waking soon. We should go greet them.”

They've all learned by now that the Dag is rarely wrong when she makes such predictions, but for the first time Furiosa wonders if it isn't something more than just intuition. If men can turn into wolves and back, perhaps some of the old stories the Many Mothers used to spend nights telling have some truth to them as well.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait! Here, have some Max POV.
> 
> Warning for hallucinations/panic attacks/Max's mental issues showing up in this chapter.

After uncounted years of traveling without a pack, Max wakes in one of two ways. Either he springs into action, ready to meet threats with bared teeth, or he stays limp and feigns sleep long enough to get his bearings. The throbbing ache in his gut leave him no choice this time around; he's in no condition to jump into a fight.

His first thought is that everything smells wrong. Max can smell his packmate nearby and hears his reassuringly steady heartbeat, but he's surrounded by smells that are nothing like the worn-in den scent of his car. Here there's mostly dusty rock, oil-metal-leather, and the uniquely human smell of too many animals in too small a space. There's old blood- his- but no stink of lead bullets, no soft susurrations of knives being readied, no herbs fouling the air, nothing to scream danger. His limbs are unbound, his body draped with soft cloth that smells of nothing so much as _clean_. A strange trap, if it be one at all.

“He's coming 'round again,” a voice says somewhere to his right, and it sounds familiar. The layers of smell and sound coalesce into a memory of time spent a cramped vehicle, determined faces, the roar of an engine, the stink of gunpowder. Here and now all is still, the danger of a strange place tempered with human memories, the packbond humming happily within his chest.

Max slits his eyes open and winces at the bright light of midday, braces himself for what he might find when his vision adjusts. As he half-expected from the input to his senses but hoped to be proven wrong about, Furiosa sits perched besides him. Two more women that the human part of him recognizes stand in the room behind her with worried expressions.

He tries to shift away, feeling vulnerable and exposed, but there is no cover to be gained and his injuries protest dully when he moves. Why he doesn't feel threatened by their presence when he's in such a weak state is a mystery he has no desire to probe. Further down near the foot of the cot Nux grabs hold of his ankle and squeezes reassuringly, lending support and grounding him in the present.

“You here, Max?” Furiosa asks, and Max wants nothing more than to crawl away to lick his wounds in peace but forces himself to nod. Months of meeting out in the wastes on top of their battle-forged bond means that he considers her something of a packmate, someone who means him no harm. Trusting anyone, much less a human, is an uncomfortable feeling that he tries not to dwell on.

“Drink this,” another voice says, belonging to someone who smells like growing things. A foreshortened arm wraps around his torso as he's hefted upright, Furiosa's body a long line of heat where she's pressed against his own flesh. A bowl is brought to his parched lips holding some sort of broth, cold but thick with salt and the traces of some kind of meat. He readily gulps it down.

“I think he's up for good now,” someone says, another voice that sounds familiar but has a scent he can't place. Names are always far away when he first becomes human again, slippery and unimportant as the animal side dials down. Their base scents are the same as when they shared space in the War Rig all those months ago, but mixed with new layers that he can't discern yet.

“Do you remember what happened?” Furiosa asks, voice rumbling through her chest into his from where she's supporting his torso. It's a purely practical hold, not so tight as to evoke the sense of a trap nor so loose that he's in danger of being dropped, but the contact is overwhelming for his frayed senses. The animal need for friendly touch is strong in the wake of his injuries but he's been on his own too long, is unused to gentleness.

“Attacked,” he rasps out when it's clear she expects some sort of answer, tongue clumsy as he struggles to remember how to speak.

She hums, the vibration sending chills down his spine. “By what? There weren't any bodies where I found you.”

It takes longer to collect his thoughts for this answer, flashes of the night before playing out when he closes his eyes. “Were-thylacine,” he manages to say when the worst of the vision passes. “Ran it off. Eventually.”

This close her scent is overwhelming, the beating of her heart and the movement of her lungs filling with air far too intimate. He tries to shift away, testing his strength and the still-healing flesh of his torso.

“What's that?” one of the former-wives asks quietly, confusion echoed by the other.

It's painful but he manages to hold his own weight mostly upright, torn muscles objecting to the strain but not collapsing. Max vividly remembers seeing his own intestines spooled in the sand before him at one point, and losing enough blood that he was sure there was no hope of living though the night. If he hadn't somehow made it to the Citadel and gotten stitched up, he's well aware that he'd have been nothing but food for the vultures.

His side is cold where it's newly-exposed to the air, Furiosa having moved away to allow him room.

“He told me there are more things like us,” Nux puts in, “I don't know what a- a whatever it was is but it's probably a shapeshifter too.”

Max hums affirmatively, he hadn't gone into too many specifics but he had begun opening the cub's eyes to the strange world that moved alongside the human one. A necessity for one of their kind, now that human ignorance wouldn't excuse any blunders.

“How did I get here?” Everything after the fight is a blur of overwhelming pain, disconnected impressions that make no sense.

“Nux led me,” Furiosa says, gesturing to his packmate who's still at the foot of the cot. The boy ducks his head and smiles, looking pleased with himself.

He's glad that it worked, but the thought of such an untrained pup allowed near humans without anyone to keep an eye on things... There are many reasons why he insists on keeping the boy out in the wastes, away from groups of humans. Young werewolves rely on instinct foremost when they shift, and a single wrong move could have tipped him into a frenzy.

“That was dangerous,” Max says to Nux in admonishment, voice quiet but firm. “Humans are easily hurt.”

“I can hold my own,” Furiosa interjects, her scent going sour under the layers of dust and oil, expression hardening, “And neither of you has ever acted aggressively.”

“ _You_ can,” he replies haltingly, “But others? It's dangerous.”

With her keen eyes and quick reflexes Furiosa would have had no trouble holding off an enraged werewolf, but there are a great deal many more humans who would not be so prepared. Even Max doesn't dare venture closer than he has to, never knowing if the animal desire to hunt down prey will be triggered by the close proximity of so many people.

“What about these other were-things- what are they? Do we have to worry about them being a problem?” The woman who speaks smells more like gunpowder and guzzoline than when he last saw her, but he recognizes the base-notes of her scent and the short hair, distinct among the former-wives. Her name eventually floats up from the depths of his memories: Toast.

She's moving further back into the room with the empty bowl in hand, lifting the lid off a piece of crockery. The rich smell of more broth fills the air and his mouth waters, body desperate for fuel.

“Thylacines,” he says, forcing himself to remember what he knows of them. It's good that they want to make sure their territory is safe, even if it means he has to be the one to talk about it. “Real ones went extinct long ago,” he pauses to shake off the lingering memory of being told how this was accomplished, “but the shifters survived. They're, hmm, tiger-dogs?” He can't help phrasing it as a question, unsure if these people born after the world died would know what tigers looked like. Perhaps as a picture in a book somewhere, or an old-timer's story.

“Stripes?” This one is lacking the iron-rich tang of pregnancy she sported when they last met, now smelling like green growth and milk. Dag, he thinks, and wonders if her pup made it.

Max nods in answer. The stripes were the important part, were how you could tell them from a common dog and know you were dealing with a human's intellect. “They don't mind humans,” no more than any other wasteland beast, just trying to survive and defend what's theirs. “Wolves set them off.”

“Why?” Furiosa asks, eyes flicking between him and Nux curiously. No doubt trying to come up with a reason from what she's seen of their behavior.

“It's complicated,” he says in reply, a non-answer that he doesn't have the energy to expand on. Toast pauses in handing over the bowl to shoot him a suspicious look, but Dag nods as if it's a perfectly valid explanation.

“They were colonists,” she says to the room at large.

It's possibly the most succinct way of summarizing what happened, the bloody slaughter that erupted when his kind discovered that were-thylacines stayed furred when killed and could be brought in for a bounty like their wild kin. His own parents arrived long after an uneasy truce between the species had been brought about, but they had been vivid in their storytelling so that he would know how dear the peace was.

Nux looks confused but Furiosa and Toast slowly nod as they contemplate this, the implications not lost on them. Though the actual history is essentially meaningless in this blighted world, the cycle of invasion and retaliation is well understood by everyone who has traveled even a small part of the wasteland. As sheltered in the Citadel's cult as he was, it's not surprising that Nux doesn't understand. Max is selfishly glad when the others answer the boy's inevitable questions.

He'd drained the bowl of broth again, the liquid settling warmly into his stomach with the promise of renewed strength. Though it's dangerous to let down his guard, even in this sheltered room that thrums with goodwill, Max feels tiredness weighing down upon himself. He doesn't dare make himself vulnerable by lying back down on the mattress, but he slumps further and lets his eyes slide shut for a long moment, listening to the hushed noises of the room.

“Enough for now,” Furiosa says rather quietly as she takes the emptied bowl from his lax grip. Max's eyes snap open in time to catch Toast exiting through the curtained doorway. Dag sounds as if she is winding down her discussion with Nux who has yet to move from the floor, scent clouded as he absorbs the impromptu history lesson.

Words of thankfulness stick in his throat, leaving him with a look of gratitude that is perhaps too heartfelt. Furiosa meets his gaze steadily until he has to look away from the intensity of her eyes, her complex scent giving no clues as to the tangle of emotions he can see in her face.

  


Nux stays behind when the women leave, though he finally unfolds himself from the floor. “Can I push the cot over?”

Max has already laid down on his own pallet and closed his eyes but he grunts in response. Even before becoming a true pack creature the boy craved contact, and now his instincts must be telling him to keep as close to his injured packmate as possible. If the beds had been sturdy enough to hold two fully grown men he doesn't doubt that Nux would have climbed in besides him rather than drag the second cot closer.

Though he needs the rest Max doesn't fully fall asleep, merely drifts half-awake as the sunlight slowly traverse the length of room. Despite the presence of Nux and the lingering, unshakable sense of pack he feels, this place is too unfamiliar to his senses. The cloth he's draped in is too soft after years of gritty leather, the room sterile rock compared to the comforting layers of scents even the War Boys couldn't strip from his car.

Waking dreams seize him from time to time as is their wont, phantasms of those he failed most grievously to protect demanding their pound of flesh. Nux is used to his erratic sleep, all too familiar with the ways night-fevers ravage his own fellow half-life brothers, and pays him no mind. By the time Max surfaces from a particularly bad vision with a stifled shout, heart racing, almost all the light has fled the room.

With no further hope of rest Max heaves himself upright once more. His torn flesh is already healed well enough to ache only dully as he moves, slower than he remembers from years gone by but still faster than any human could dream of. The cost of healing so swiftly is the aching hollowness in his stomach, vicious pangs of hunger that leave him lightheaded and shaky.

Seeing that he is awake Nux breaks from his reverie, a contemplative expression on his face. “Bloo- Max,” he starts to say, and hearing his actual name from the boy is mildly disorienting. When did he tell him? But of course the memory of telling Furiosa and the other women surfaces, and he supposes Nux must have overheard it from them at some point. “How do you know if someone is pack?”

A fission of something akin to panic blooms in his chest, the question landing too close to things Max has been very pointedly not contemplating. He deflects with a shake of his head, not nearly coherent enough between the waking nightmares and hunger pains to even begin to answer. “Food.”

Nux frowns in confusion. “What does food have to- oh! Sorry.”

Max sends him a wry smile before scanning the room. The covered pot of broth lays on a carved stone shelf, a jug of what smells like clean water besides it.

“I can ask someone to bring grub?” Nux asks, already moving to fetch another bowlful of broth. Max contemplates this and gives an ambiguous shrug in reply. Cautiously he tests his strength and finds that he can stand, albeit shakily, well enough to be able to walk under his own power. He finds his clothes folded underneath the foot of the cot, bizarrely clean until he remembers how much water these people have- enough to waste on washing years of sweat and road dust out of fabric on a whim.

As he's pulling on his shirt, no longer stiff in places and with neat stitch-work unlike his own mending a tear he'd not gotten around to closing, a thought strikes him.

“Where's the car?” Before each full moon their meager belongings and clothes were locked safely into the Interceptor, though with a mangled frame and lack of windows the act was more symbolic these days than anything else. His clothes should be kilometers away in the desert with the rest of his and Nux's things.

“In the ChopShop- but no one's touching her! I had to fight off a crew of repair boys what wanted to work on her again, but I knew you'd want to see to it yourself,” Nux is pleased with himself as he offers a cupful of broth, scent mellow and expression alight.

Max downs the bowl in an effort to distract himself from the feeling of a trap springing shut. “We're not... staying,” he says as gently as he can manage, which isn't very. Already the walls around him feel far too solid and unrelenting, and it sets his teeth on edge. One thing to take refuge long enough to heal, another entirely to settle in for the length of time repairs would take.

“Why not? We'll spend the full moons out on the sands of course,” Nux says, brown furrowing in confusion. “But why leave again? The sisters said we're welcome, and Furiosa doesn't think we're dangerous anyway.”

Just then there's a knock on the other side of the doorway, and Max is selfishly glad for the interruption. The thick curtain that blocks the space pulling back to reveal a young woman, her scent pleasant enough but shockingly pale, almost washed off her skin entirely- a throwback to the days when water was plentiful enough to waste on bathing whenever one wished. The thin aroma doesn't tell him much about her but it's as familiar as the others he shared space with during the flight away from the Citadel, and he knows her to be one of the former-wives.

“We thought you might be up by now,” she says with a shy smile, though the expression turns to concern when she takes in the room. “Oh, you're standing! Are you sure it's alright?” She's obviously not the redheaded girl Nux would occasionally talk about on dark nights when neither of them could sleep, which makes her Cheedo. He thinks they called her Fragile as well, but she looks strong enough to him.

Max dips his head in reply, the rest and food having returned enough strength that he no longer need be confined to a bed. His leg brace and jacket weren't with his things and he feels exposed without them, is reminded of when he first came to be in this place. They'd left the brace on him then. No use for the form-fitted fiberglass that made up the base of it, a remnant of the old world incompatible with this metal scrapyard.

“There's food in the meal room, or I could have something brought for you?”

He and Nux exchange a look, Max weighing the merits of leaving the relative safety of the makeshift den against Nux's abiding need to be surrounded by people. “We'll go,” he says in answer for the both of them.

Cheedo smiles again and holds the door-tapestry aside, gesturing for them to step into the hallway. There are torches set into the walls, most unlit while the last of the sun still lingers, but some fill the space with guttering light and acrid smoke as they pass.

With the combination of wounds still pulling at his flesh, the hunger gnawing his bones, and the lack of his brace, Max's steps are slow and unsteady. Nux hovers off to the side, not reaching out yet but wanting to be of help in some way. He still radiates confusion, and Max spares a moment to hope he won't bring up the topic of staying while they're in the company of others.

They come upon the mess hall quickly enough, the smell of food so rich it overpowers him for a moment. “There's our table,” Cheedo says and points to a long table already half-filled with people among a sea of others, “You're guests so take a seat and I'll get you food.”

There are more people here than Max has seen in months, the smell of so many bodies nearly enough to overwhelm the aroma of cooked food. He draws himself up straight and walks as smoothly as he is able, loathe to show weakness in front of these strangers and former enemies. A few still wear white paint and black grease over their skin, turning them into nightmarish figures. There's no way to tell individual scents in the riot of humanity but none present smell like fellow shifters, and for that he is glad.

“Capable!” Nux calls cheerfully as they near the table. The woman in question waves them over, expression shuttered.

The table and bench are carved from solid stone and rooted to the floor, but age and long use has worn their edges smooth. Max has to hide a wince as he maneuvers his bad leg over the bench, his stitches pulling at the stretch, and feels grateful that this end of the table is nearly empty.

“Didn't expect to see you out of bed so soon,” Toast says, eyeing him as he settles into his seat.

“We heal fast,” Nux replies for him, eyes following Cheedo as she makes her way to the table bearing plates of food.

“Why didn't you help?” Capable asks and shoots Nux an angry look, standing to take one of the plates out of Cheedo's hands. “ _You're_ not injured.”

Nux seems to take the scolding to heart, hunching in on himself to make a smaller target. “I told them to go ahead,” Cheedo replies pointedly. “They're guests.”

There are layers to the conversation that Max isn't following, but with a plate of food in front of him he finds he doesn't much care. There's a shocking amount of fresh vegetables, colors vibrant even in the dim light of the hall, and a sizable pile of what might be a mash of beans and meal-bugs. The desire to bolt the entire meal down in as few bites as possible is strong but he forces himself to eat slowly, savoring the rarity of fresh food.

He's positioned with his back to the wall, leaving him free to look over the room as he eats. Max avoids staring at the former-wives who are embroiled in a discussion with Nux, instead letting his eyes dart around, taking everything in. His sense of smell is next to useless, everything covered with the smell of food and days old sweat, and he's glad for the familiar thread of Nux's scent by his side. His hearing is worse off- sounds bounce across the stone walls readily, amplifying the noise to levels that must be uncomfortable even to human ears.

A group further back in the room starts up what might generously be called a song, lyrics unintelligible to his ears but the beat is strong and pounds against his skull in waves. Soon a second group starts sing-shouting in reply, adding to the din. Max eats mechanically while taking this in, the food no longer tasting like much of anything on his tongue and sitting like lead in his stomach. His fork scrapes against the metal plate with a harsh shriek, sending a shiver down his spine.

The torches flicker along the walls, casting strange twisting shadows that tug at his searching eyes. Max fears he is caught in a waking nightmare as skeletons blend with ordinary humans, the noise of the singers transmuting into something hellish and otherworldly. The sunlight is down to it's deepest red hues, filtered by sandstone until it looks as if everything was washed in so much blood.

“Max, is that you?” The child tumbles out from under one of the long tables, accompanied by a giggling swarm of bald-headed playmates. His eyes dart to walls where he sees faces that he knows belong to the dead staring accusingly at him. The only mercy is that they don't yet speak, or perhaps their shouts are drowned out by the general cacophony around him.

He's mesmerized by the sight, unwillingly trapped into stillness, heart racing while he waits for the ax to fall. The noise builds to a crescendo as his vision begins dimming, eyes unwaveringly locked on onto the gaze of the child where she stands drenched in bloody red light in the center of the room.

“Max?”

A touch at shoulder causes him to violently twists in his seat, fork clenched in his hand like a weapon and teeth bared, ready to meet the threat. The hand pulls back instantly, but he can't make out who it belongs to with the shades clouding his vision. Though his throat isn't built for it a low growl tries to tear free from his chest, a threat and a desperate plea for space in one.

"Whoa!"

"What's wrong with him?"

"I think he's growling."

“Was no one paying attention?” The words make no sense to Max but their tone is angry, and he bristles further. He slips off the back of the bench to crouch with his back to the wall, the cool stone a comforting solidness. If his nostrils weren't full of the reek of humans he would risk the pain and exposure of shifting forms to better meet the danger he senses lurking the edges of the dim room.

“He's always quiet! How were we to know he'd go feral?”

"Careful, looks like he might bite."

“Max?” Softer, directed at him. His packmate- the pup- reaches out a tentative hand and Max grabs his wrist, pulls him bodily off the bench. He smells unharmed and Max isn't giving that the chance to change- he won't watch another packmember be ripped away. The pup protests vocally but stays limp, allows himself to be manhandled into a somewhat-defensible position on the ground next to him.

“Get everyone out, I'll handle this.”

“Good thing Dag's sprout wasn't here, imagine her wailing added to this.”

“Shh! Let's not set him off further.” The shadows across his vision shift and distort, eyes unable to find purchase on the swirling forms.

“Max, it's alright.” The soft voice returns, cutting through the garbled sounds filling his ears, and with effort he recognizes his name. It's hard to tell if the noise level has dropped or if his own hearing has started to shut down.

“Shh,” the voice says, “you're okay.” More movement catches his eye but it's slow and deliberate, nonthreatening. The cub remains still but he too begins speaking, halting words that sound soft but meaningless.

The other speaker has a familiar smell, not a wolf but comforting nonetheless, and breathing it in helps to dial his racing heart down a few notches.

“There now, it's alright.” With a shake of his head Max chases away the last of the fog from his vision, staying tensed for a fight as he takes in his surroundings with clearer eyes.

The mess hall is deserted, the only occupants himself, Nux, and Furiosa who's kneeling an arm's length away. She's talking quietly, all calming nonsense words the way she had spoken on full moon nights. Where everyone else went he has no idea, but he's glad for the silence and the way the heavy air slowly gives way to a fresh breeze rolling through the windows. Max realizes that he's panting, ragged breaths loud in the relative silence.

There's no longer any threat, if there was one in the first place, and his ghosts are nowhere to be seen. By inches he relaxes his stance and catches Nux's sigh of relief, Furiosa's restrained smile. With effort he slows his breathing until his chest is no longer heaving, matching it to the steady inhales he can hear from the two of them.

“Hey Max,” Furiosa's voice is carefully soft when she speaks, “Back with us?” Words are far beyond him but he meets her gaze as steadily as he is able, manages to dip his chin in an approximation of a nod. He forces his hands to unclench around the fork, lets it fall to the ground with a dull clatter.

“I can't believe no one noticed,” she says with a sigh, slowly shifting to a more comfortable position on the dusty floor.

“I should have,” Nux says from his left, carefully squirming his way out of the awkward arrangement he'd been shoved into, the last of his fearful scent dissolving and giving way to sadness and worry. “But I was distracted by talking to Capable and the sisters.”

Max would feel annoyed at being talked over like an invalid, but he doesn't have the energy to protest. What he wants is a safe den to curl up in for some real sleep, if such a thing even exists anymore. The familiar walls of the Interceptor will do for at least one of those.

With a groan he heaves himself upright, bad knee protesting with an audible click and a sharp twinge of pain. His stomach feels as if he might have ripped away a stitch or two, but they would need to come out soon anyway. Furiosa and Nux follow his example and stand, with Nux carefully extending a hand to steady his shoulder.

“Back to bed?” the boy asks with false cheer, and Max shakes his head in response.

“Car,” he says, the word thick on his tongue.

“You are _not_ driving away,” Furiosa replies, half command and half statement of disbelief.

Max sends her sardonic look, well aware of how foolish it would be to leave the Citadel's protection in such a state. “Den,” he grits out, “safer.”

She leverages an unimpressed look at him, but Nux seems to pick up his meaning. “It's instinct,” he says to Furiosa, “The room you lent us is shiny 'n all but it's not the same as a den, especially not when he's like this. I think he's had the same car since Before, even.” Max takes a few wobbling steps but doesn't make it far before both Nux and Furiosa are gripping his upper arms, steadying him.

“Alright Fool,” Furiosa says with a thread of fond exasperation in her voice, “To your rig. But I'm taking your sparkplugs.”

The hallways are empty as they make their lopsided way to the cave his Interceptor is stashed in. Max's strength recovers enough along the way that he could pull away and walk unassisted, but- the contact is pleasant, and makes the packbond in his chest thrum happily. With his defenses lowered he allows his head to list to the side and take in a few deep lungfuls of Furiosa's complex scent, still indecipherable to his nose but pleasing all the same.


	5. Chapter 5

Furiosa hadn't taken the sparkplugs, he finds out the next morning- she'd taken his whole damn battery. Max is impressed despite himself that he hadn't noticed her lugging the heavy thing out of the garage, but as the feat now has him trapped several stories above the ground with a car that won't start, he's less than pleased.

“How should I know where it is?” Toast scoffs when she stops by with a begrudgingly-delivered tray of dry mealcakes. Her eyes rake over the mangled lines of the Interceptor, expression skeptical. “You sure it'll run even _with_ a battery?”

Max bristles at her tone, but it's Nux who replies. “'Course she runs! Got a real shine V8 in there, just needs some dents banged out is all.”

It's not strictly true- the Interceptor _does_ run well enough to keep them from being stranded entirely, but there's something the matter that Max hasn't been able to fix with the limited supplies they've scavenged. The wrecks of the road war had been swept clean within days, into gang territory or dragged back to the Citadel, unreachable without anything to trade but skills.

“Well,” Toast says magnanimously and gestures to the room at large, “You know where the tools are.”

It's a ploy to get him and Nux to stay longer and he knows this, but the boy's scent goes bright with excitement as he starts to grin, and Max lets it go. His wounds are all but healed by now, helped along by good food and the warm thrum of pack that fills his chest. With the full moon almost the whole month away they can risk staying for a few days, he decides. Just long enough to fix whatever it is that's causing the Interceptor to belch black smoke when he drives above 40kph.

The bonnet is already raised so Max begins there, taking in the patchwork of repairs and modifications he's done over the years. Nux eagerly comes to stand besides him, already familiar with the workings of the Interceptor by necessity, but Max freezes when Toast draws near.

Her expression is one of guarded curiosity, hands empty of tools or weapons but- having her so near the heart of his car sends a skitter of uneasiness down his spine. She's not pack the same way Nux is, and the mechanics on display feel suddenly like a vulnerability, like his own guts exposed to the air.

Nux draws in a deep sniff besides him and Max realizes that with their proximity there's no way the pup doesn't smell the tracery of fear winding through his scent. He slants a curious look at Max, but refrains from saying anything for the moment.

Toast pauses a meter away or so away, gaze turned thoughtful. The Knowing, they had called her, he remembers in a burst. She takes a step back leisurely and then turns altogether, showing the nonthreatening expanse of her back to him.

“If you need anything,” she says airily, already starting to walk away, “I'm sure there are plenty of blackthumbs hanging around who'd be eager to assist.”

 

“Why did you leave?” It's a fair question, if not the one he expected Capable to ask. “We thought that, after... But you left.” She hasn't forgiven him yet for keeping Nux away, for letting the Citadel think he had died, but he hadn't thought that she holds a grudge against this offense as well.

His eyes flick over to Nux hunched over the rear of the car, fiddling with the attachments the War Boys had added that still need to be removed or repurposed. There isn't any answer he can give that a human would understand.

It had been almost impossible to leave Furiosa that day, her scent absorbing his own through their mingled blood until he had to turn away or lose himself in the mixture. He had only managed because the thread connecting the two of them had hummed in his chest that she was safe, safe with her own pack, and he knew he had no place there.

The whisper-thin bond connecting him to Nux had wavered and _tugged_ , a lost pup crying out for help. There wasn't anything Max could do but retrace his steps until he found the twisted heap of metal that was once the War Rig, the equally twisted body inside of it. A better man would have let the boy have his well-deserved death, would have sat through the last shuddering gasps or brought about a swift end.

Max was not a good man. The wolf in him cried out in despair at the thought of this fragile bond snapping, the further ruin it would mean for his own self. Pulling Nux from his metal tomb was a selfish act to keep another ghost at bay, another lost packmate from weighing on his soul. The boy had smelled like pack, like _his_ with Max's blood in his veins; no matter how unwillingly it had been taken from him, his instincts howled on Nux's behalf.

Turning him, bringing him into his pack properly- Max was, is, has always been selfish, and a wolf is one of the more resilient creatures that roam the wasteland. The Rock Riders left him alone to drag the half-dead corpse into the shelter of an overhang, just large enough for a pair of bodies. The Bite was a messy business, without the strength of an established pack to ease the way, and they wanted no part in it

And when Nux had survived, had shaken his way through the last of his night-fevers and opened his eyes to the new life afforded him, Max had run. The bonds in his chest demanded he return to where the strength of the pack dwell, but the human in him remembered the dangers of closeness. Time would have eased the pull, if he had been able to stay away- but the instinctual calls for a separated pack had been answered, month after month, and he wasn't strong enough to sever that tie completely.

Capable huffs out a breath, tired of waiting for his response. “Why didn't you come _back_ , then?” she asks, and that at least is easier to put into words.

“Wasn't safe,” Max replies, thinking of how Nux had raged and keened, pulled apart by his new instincts as they settled into a body that was healthy and whole for the first time in his life. It still isn't safe, not really, but Max sees the way Nux turns to Capable like a flower to the sun and can't quite bring himself to take that away a second time just yet. “He wanted to,” he adds, knowing it won't help much.

“But you didn't,” Capable says, and he doesn't know if she means the both of them not returning or if she's guessing at his own desires.

The only answer he can offer is the same either way. “Couldn't,” he says helplessly, and turns as if to work on the car, avoiding her eyes.

 

Dag stops by the garage often in the company of her sisters, but she only brings her cub with her once. It's tiny in her lanky arms, soft and round and still new-smelling, the sweet tang of milk and clean cloth. She carries it unselfconsciously in a sling around her chest, lets it tangle fingers in her dangling hair while she carries on conversations, hands soothing over its back on instinct rather than intent.

The sight of it tears Max in two. It's a new life, with a scent that winds through the garage like trailing greenery, and he wants more than anything to protect it. It's a reminder of his failings, the soft-skinned cub he doesn't allow himself to ever think about, the aching chasm in his chest where the deepest of his packbonds was ripped away.

Nux coos over the infant easily, with every careless swipe of his hands trading scent, marking the child as pack unthinkingly. Max finds himself holding his breath, heart pounding against the cage of his ribs, wanting simultaneously to draw in close yet run as far as his legs could carry him.

The agony draws itself out until some unknown factor tips the scales, and he stumbles away from the sight with a harsh whine. The conversation stops as both sets of eyes land on Max, one hand clenching the frame of his car hard enough for the rough steel to bite into his flesh, the other pressed over his mouth to stifle the noises trying to escape.

“Max?” Nux asks, passing the cub back to its mother, but the scent of it lingers far too strongly when he steps forward.

Dag stares at him with no hint of one of her insights, confusion and annoyance weaving through her scent as she settles the baby back into her arms.

Max closes his eyes, forces himself to breath through his mouth, glad for the grease smeared on his hand to block worst of the smell. He regains most of himself after a minute, slowly unfurls from his tense position until he's no longer pressed against the comforting metal of the Interceptor. The ache in his chest is vicious as it throbs in time with his heartbeat, but with effort he forces the bile back down, reigns in his shuddering breaths.

Hovering awkwardly between him and Dag is Nux, radiating a foggy mix of fear and worry, and it's difficult to push past the pup on the way to the door but Max manages. Far easier is finding an open ledge, even in the labyrinthine tunnels of the Citadel's spires, and he breathes the desert-scoured wind gratefully, lets the open sprawl of the wasteland before him scatter his senses until he can bear to fully return to his skin.

It's Furiosa who finds him later, heartbeat unmistakable, smelling like no one but herself. She doesn't announce herself, just steps out onto the ledge and settles down besides him to gaze at the blighted plains in silence.

Max doesn't owe her or anyone else an explanation, knows also that she would be content to let the matter lie closed, and thinks perhaps that's why he finds himself wanting to speak.

“We called him Sprog,” he says, letting the quiet words drift out in a lull in the wind, face still turned to the expanse of sand. Besides him Furiosa says nothing, just breathes steadily in a rhythm that he matches to his own inhales and exhales.

The confession does nothing to alleviate the deep ache Max feels, but hearing the name spoken aloud for the first time in years upon years brings up a tangle of emotions that he's been ignoring for far too long. There's the pain and sadness, the horror, anger... But snarled up in the mix is a thread of remembered happiness and bone-deep love, the echoes of memories long past.

He is suddenly, selfishly glad that Furiosa is a human, and he can maintain the illusion that his emotions are private. Max curls into himself further, locks his hands around one raised knee and lets himself feel the grief roiling beneath the surface.

“I killed mine in the womb,” Furiosa says after a time, softly, words almost lost to the wind. “It was better that way, for the both of us.” Her always-complicated scent reaches his nose and it's suffused with nothing like sadness, or longing, or anger. There's just steady resignation, the animal knowledge of gnawing off one's limb to escape a trap.

They sit side by side on the ledge until the sun touches the horizon. Max lightly knocks his shoulder against hers, feels the lack of heat put off by her wind-chilled skin through his own sleeve, finally turns to look in her direction. She returns his gaze steadily until the moment breaks, and it's just the two of them on a ledge that will soon be treacherous in the growing dark.

 

Max lingers at the Citadel longer than necessary because Nux is utterly delighted to be back among the brothers he grew up with, to have the constant presence of so many people always at his side. It's dizzying for Max to even contemplate- the tangle of scents and press of eyes, the chatter and pointed silences- but the pup seems to thrive on it.

When he isn't working on the Interceptor, Nux is roaming the tunnels with the rest of the no-longer-War Boys, swapping stories of stunts they've pulled and deaths they've Witnessed. It puts Max on edge, reminds him of hurtling across the desert strapped to the front of a car, of the utter wrongness of his blood linking him to a painted skeleton.

But along with the anonymous scent of humans and paint and engine grease that builds up on his skin, there's always a layer that says Capable, or Toast, or Furiosa. He smells like pack even when drifting along the river of humanity that flows in and out of the tunnels, and the happiness that thrums along the packbond between them resonates with ever-stronger branches that Max is very deliberately not thinking of.

Not thinking about the issue extends to not answering any of Nux's questions about the nature of pack, but the pup seems to have figured out enough for himself. He's constantly in the presence of Capable and her sisters, displaying an easy tactility that continues to wind the threads tighter. It's something Max can ignore, until suddenly it isn't.

“Come on mate,” Nux cajoles one night, restless and unable to settle, “There are real beds to be had!”

Max grunts in response and hunkers down further into the driver's seat of the Interceptor, unwilling to leave what scraps of familiarity he has left to him. The thought of sleeping prone on a mattress is foreign after years on the road, the position too open to attack.

Nux sighs, and there's a twinge of real sadness in his scent as he gathers up 'his' blanket from the back seat.

“Alright,” he says, “Suit yourself. But I miss lying flat every now and again.” He shoots a stern look at Max, finger pointing. “This doesn't mean I'm traitoring, got it? Just need a night or two out of the rig is all.”

Max says nothing, just watches as Nux stares him down before turning away exasperatedly. It's hard for him to give voice to the warring instincts, the desire to be safe in his den versus the need to be where his pack is, so he remains silent. The pup marches away determinedly, only pausing briefly in the doorway of the garage to look back and make one last wordless plea.

With a turned werewolf the instincts are lessened, Max knows, but they're still present. If he was determined to keep Nux in the den he could tug on the packbond, manipulate him into feeling as if there's something the matter with being apart- but even the thought leaves a sour taste in his mouth. He'd seen packs like that, bound by fear and mutual need until they were less than the sum of their parts.

The garage is quiet at night, more so with only his own breathing to echo around the space. Max has gotten sloppy, complacent with the safety of someone at his back, and it doesn't take him long to realize that sleep will be a long time coming if it arrives at all. Even thought the human part of him rationalizes that no one has entered the garage uninvited since he arrived, the omnipresent reminders of how alone he is in a hostile space keep his instincts keyed up.

To make matters worse, though he tries to throttle the packbond down to a whisper it gnaws uneasily on his mind, whining with the distance. Nux isn't experienced enough to manipulate it, can only radiate what's already present, a steady thrum of sleepy contentment calling for Max to join in their rest.

It's stronger than he can resist, locked away as he is in a metal box that smells more like quiet misery than comfort, years of his own scent layered upon itself. He leaves the car to pace the length of the garage, taking in the faint scents of others as they fade from the day. He should only be feeling Nux through the packbond, the blood-link between him and Furiosa obliterated, but somehow it's only grown stronger, rooted itself in the space offered by the sisters.

His pacing leads him out of the garage to the corridor, tugged onwards by an unseen force that in the dark of night he's helpless to obey.

The closer Max draws to the room he was first placed in upon his return to the Citadel, the stronger the smell and feel of pack grows. He's following the bond as much as his nose, is surprised when it leads him not to the curtained doorway he inhabited formerly but a sturdy metal door set flush into the stone some meters away. He paces the length of the dim hallway quietly, but the scent seeping out from under the door is unmistakable.

It's full dark, no light to be seen from under the door, and if he strains to listen he can hear the steady breathing of sleep. He should leave them be, let Nux have his puppy pile though it draws him inextricably further into the mesh of the women's lives.

There's the muted sound of movement on the other side of the door, footsteps on stone, and Max tenses. He should leave, back away into the shadows and return to his lonely den knowing that the pack is safe in his absence, but- the heartbeat growing louder is intimately familiar.

There's the rasp of a lock being drawn back and then the door is cracked ajar, Furiosa's wary face gazing out. She scans the hallway, relaxes almost imperceptibly when her eyes land on him.

“Max?” she whispers, stepping out into the hallway, door pushed not quite all the way shut behind her. Her hand still grips the knife she'd drawn to subdue a potential threat, alert for danger despite the late hour, and Max feels a sudden rush of appreciation for her that is so strong it forces him to draw in a ragged breath.

“Max,” Furiosa repeats a little sharper, “is there something the matter?” Her keen gaze scans him up and down, checking for injuries, for weapons he might have grabbed to prepare for a fight. But he's empty-handed, not even wrapped in his jacket, and feels stripped bare as he stands in the quiet hallway.

He shakes his head in answer, sways a little towards the warm den-scent escaping from the cracked door. Furiosa's eyes light up with realization, and without turning away from him she uses the bare stump of her arm to push the door open further.

“Nux is fine,” she says, gesturing behind herself into the dark room. “See for yourself.” Max steps forward helplessly, close enough to see the pile of pallets on the floor, the bodies curled up around each other. The packbond in his chest is practically singing with how right it feels, how the scents of them all overlap into pack, only missing his own to make it complete.

He works his jaw until the words come, struggling against the flood of instincts demanding he stay and protect. “Can I... stay?”

Max can't look at Furiosa to gauge her reaction, knows it will be too fleeting to appear in her scent, just focuses on the waiting den. “Of course,” she says, “You're more than welcome.” She steps aside, leaving the doorway open for him to step through.

The door closes behind him, shutting off the dim light from the hallway and leaving just the wash of moonlight though the window. Max toes off his boots, the thunk of them falling rousing one of the sleeping figures to stir restlessly. There's space at the edges of the pushed-together pallets and he feels acutely aware of Furiosa's eyes on him as he pads forward to claim a spot.

The sleeping body he lays next to could belong to any of the women, as tightly interwoven as their scents are in this moment. Tension he wasn't aware that he was carrying loosens in his shoulders as he sinks into the simple feeling of body heat, and he closes his eyes for a long moment to let himself breathe.

When Max opens them again, it's to see that Furiosa is perched on a bare bed frame pushed against the wall, a small almost indulgent smile on her face. He catches her eyes and gestures for her to join in the pile, but she wordlessly shakes her head.

It's not right, to have her hover at the edges when the sense of pack is otherwise so strong in the room. He already feels flayed open just from coming here, thinks nothing of the added vulnerability of leaving the mattress to stand before her, one hand tentatively extended.

“You... belong,” Max says, surprised that words are even on his tongue at all, and nods his head towards the sleeping pile of bodies. “Pack.”

Furiosa's eyes trail from his extended hand to his face, and in this safe dark space he finds that he can hold her gaze steadily. There's something unguarded, almost raw in her expression that has him wanting to draw her into the center of the pile, curl around her until it leaves her face.

She hesitates but lets her hand land in his, pulls herself to her feet. It takes a few careful nudges before there's enough space for the two of them, the sleeping bodies ceding territory on the pallets with indistinct murmurs as they resist truly waking. Max finds himself pressed between Furiosa and the others, her spine a long line of warmth against his own back, and it feels like nothing so much as _safe_.

The novelty of sleeping on a flat surface is no match for the utter peace and contentment filling his senses, and Max finds himself drifting off to a true sleep quicker than he has in a long, long time.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait! Back to Furiosa's POV from here on out.

Though everyone has their own rooms, it wasn't all that unusual for the sisters to congregate into one room together at night to keep the creeping darkness at bay. Furiosa didn't often join them for the actual sleeping, preferring to slip out once they started drifting off or stay and keep watch. When Nux shows up as the sun is setting, wrapped in a ratty blanket and looking as if he expects to be kicked away, it was an unspoken agreement among all of them that he would be staying the night.

It wasn't that she doesn't trust him, but the sight of any man tangled with the girls in such a vulnerable state sets Furiosa on edge with the implications of violence, and she resigns herself to keeping watch to pacify her own fears.

Max showing up is unexpected; he'd kept his distance with them, reluctantly allowing them into his space without seeking out company the way Nux so easily did. He looks shockingly small and exposed out in the dim hallway, more like the dog she'd grown used to than a man at all, so much so that it hadn't been an option to bar him entrance to the room.

She hadn't meant to let herself be convinced to join the pile of sleeping bodies on the mattresses but the room was quiet and safe, the door securely shut against the outside world. Neither of the men had done anything to earn her distrust in this area, she reminds herself as she lets her eyes slip shut, and it wasn't as if she couldn't taken them out if they did try anything, sleep or no.

Furiosa wakes twice, the first time opening her eyes to meet Max's, her own still hazed with sleep and not taking in any details in the pre-dawn gloom. He had murmured a quiet word of peace and gotten off the mattress, and she wasn't worried enough to wake fully, at ease with the knowledge that no one in the room wanted to do harm. She had simply rolled into the warm space Max had left and sank back into the waiting darkness.

The second time she wakes there's only Toast and Cheedo left on the pallets with her, and the sun is higher in the sky than she should have let it get.

Furiosa doesn't think anything of not seeing Max during the course of the day until she stops by the workshop his ride was parked in and finds it empty. The car he and Nux had worked on for the past twenty or so days is nowhere to be seen, nor are any of his scattered belongings. She had been half-expecting him to split at some point or other, but she also had been hoping- apparently in vain- that the fool would let her know when the time came rather than just drive off.

Finding that he left Nux behind, however, is a surprise. Furiosa pauses at the entrance to one of the water-gardens when she sees the boy fiddling with one of the lines, his eyes snapping to the doorway when he hears her approach.

There had been little that Max was willing or able to share about the nature of being a werewolf, but the importance of pack members was something that even Nux knew enough about to explain. It's easy to make sense of why he would suddenly leave the Citadel when she considers the wild panic that would creep over him now and again, but she can't imagine why he wouldn't have taken Nux with him.

“Max's car is gone,” Furiosa says to him in lieu of a greeting.

He nods easily; so Max hadn't kept his leaving a complete secret, then. “Left this morning,” Nux says, then pauses to cock his head to the side in confusion. “Did he not tell you?”

Furiosa just huffs out a breath and shakes her head. Of course he wouldn't tell her he was leaving, much as she would have preferred to have heard it from him. “Why did you stay?” she asks, "I thought he would have taken you with him."

“It's home, innit?” Nux replies with a shrug. “As long as I make sure I'm clear for the full moon I'm not much danger anymore, even Max agreed. 'M not road-crazy like him, I like having my own space to bunk in. And Capable's here, 'n my mates in the shops; doesn't make sense to leave.”

“What about being pack, I thought that meant you stayed together?” she asks, honestly curious about the nonchalant way the boy was reacting to the separation.

His expression turns pensive, and he knuckles the skin over his scarred chest. “We'll always be pack,” Nux says, “But it's not just him and me anymore. I think he needs the space. And we'll still meet up for the full moon, of course.”

Which means Max plans on returning at least to keep an eye on Nux, which is more certainty than she'd ever gotten out of him.

“I'll know if anything happens to him, anyway,” he adds.

“What do you mean?”

“I don't know how it works, can't explain much,” Nux says with an apologetic expression, “But I can sorta feel him? And you 'n the sisters, a bit, but mostly him since we're both wolves.”

“You can 'feel' him,” Furiosa repeats tonelessly, because the words don't make much sense.

He shrugs helplessly. “Can't put it in better words. Just- I'll know if he gets hurt-like, or something.”

However it works, the thought of knowing how the Fool is faring is comforting, in a way. Despite the fact that he's evidently managed to survive thus far, there are countless dangers on the road for him to stumble across. Furiosa is not however going to think about him apparently "feeling" her and the others as well, the idea too strange and mildly disturbing. If she had some sense of him in return maybe it would be less unsettling to contemplate, but as it is she'll wait for Max to return so she can wring answers out of him about it.

 

There's a storm brewing on the horizon, one Furiosa can feel throughout her entire body. She's broken enough bones and endured so many flesh wounds that it's more of a general ache than anything localized, the throb of it spread out and sparking along her nerves.

It's easy enough to ignore, nothing like the scale of the massive sandstorm that helped her win her freedom. There's tarps that need to be laid out over the lower garden beds, people and machinery to be lifted off the ground to the safe shelter of stone walls, work that needed doing despite any soreness the people responsible for carrying it out might be feeling.

“Have you seen Nux?” Cheedo asks as she passes by in the hallway, a bundle of freshly-washed cloths in her arms. “Capable's looking for him.”

Furiosa shakes her head, she hasn't seen the boy since the morning meal. “I'll keep an eye out,” she says, unconcerned. He was always underfoot somewhere, probably had set himself working on some rig's engine and lost track of time.

Cheedo flashes a smile in reply and continues on her way. There's nothing that Furiosa needs to be doing at the moment, the most delicate of the greenery covered and the conveyance of the not-so-Wretched well in hand, and she decides she might as well search out Nux herself. A very small part of her admits that she's loathe to be more active than she must on such a heavy low-pressure day, when she can feel all her old aches keenly as they react to the atmosphere.

She sends a pair of runners to sweep two of the towers, searches the third main spire for herself. By the time she's reached the midlevel, where workshops give way to living spaces, she still hasn't found him nor run across anyone who admits to seeing him. The storm has just touched down, sand whirling outside the walls, wind almost sounding like wolf howls when it pushes through the narrow windows.

Nux wouldn't run off like their fool had, of that she's certain, so when the runners return to say that the other towers are clear as well a fission of worry blooms in her chest. On a hunch Furiosa skips the remaining communal spaces and heads for the room he'd been staying in since Max left.

There's no proper door, just a heavy curtain to partition the space, and she raps her metal hand against the stone as a warning before drawing the fabric aside. The room is dim, lantern unlit and storm clouds filtering the sunlight, but there's enough light to easily see the figures huddled together on the cot.

Nux looks like a frightened child, curled in on himself while Capable pets along the length of his spine soothingly. “Furiosa?” she calls out softly in greeting.

“Is he hurt? Sick?” she replies, stepping fully into the room to see the pair better. Nux lets out a small whimper but Capable shakes her head.

“Just scared, I think.”

“Of the storm?” There are always younger Pups who fear the wind and thunder, even knowing they're safe inside the walls, but she wouldn't have thought that Nux would be affected so late in life.

“It's heavy,” Nux croaks out in a quavering voice, “Loud.”

Furiosa looks down at him contemplatively. He'd surely have his own aches from a rough life, and if his last crash was the War Rig it was long enough ago there should be nothing he wouldn't have learned to handle- but he looks too honestly pathetic to be faking.

“He was worse earlier,” Capable says, “Pacing and whining something awful.”

It stirs something in her memory, of how the animals of the Green Place always seemed to disappear before a storm, as if they could sense it. And Nux is a great deal closer to being an animal now than he had been in the past. If that's all it is then there's nothing to be done, other than to keep letting Capable coddle him. Furiosa can let the others know there's no need to keep looking for him, at least.

Without over-thinking the gesture she ruffles her flesh hand over the top of Nux's head, as if he was covered in fur again instead of prickly stubble. He closes his eyes at the touch and sighs, but doesn't relax his body at all.

“I'll send some food up,” she offers, predicting that the boy will be in no condition to handle the mess hall come meal time.

Capable smiles gratefully. “Could you grab the book in my room? I might as well finish reading it while I'm here.”

Furiosa nods and steps away from the cot, to Nux's vocal displeasure.

“Oh hush,” Capable says to him soothingly, “I can pet you and read at the same time.”

Whatever the boy says in response is drowned out to Furiosa's ears by the noise of the wind, but it's not meant for her anyway. The pair had been rocky to start, but they'd somehow made up and seemed more wrapped up in each other every day, and to see the soft way they treated each other was almost uncomfortable, from the outside. She's glad to slip the book to Capable and leave them alone to weather the storm.

 

When the first day of the full moon dawns no one is quite sure how to treat Nux. He doesn't seem to act any different, and Furiosa has it on good authority that he won't change shape until after the sun has gone down, but there's still an air of anticipation that lasts until it's finally nearing sunset.

It's a relief to load Nux and Capable up into one of the cars and head out into the sands, away from the press of curious eyes. They've only told the sisters and the remaining Vuvalini about the two men being werewolves, but it seems as if the entire Citadel knows there's something happening tonight. She idly wonders if there are any other shape-changers among the people, if anyone else has been slipping away for solitude on the full moons.

“How will Max find us?” Capable asks as they skim over the dunes, Furiosa steering them well away from the blood-stained rocks where she found Max last.

“We'll howl,” Nux replies, “It's how pack finds each other. And he'll smell us too, if we're close enough.”

There's nothing around for a few kilometers in any direction when Furiosa hauls the rig to a stop. A good a place as any, she thinks, leaving the car to survey the gentle rises of sand around them.

“You want space to change?” she asks Nux when he emerges, but he shakes his head.

“Nah, unless you mind me being starkers?”

Furiosa has long since lost her sensitivity towards nudity, but she slants a look towards Capable to gauge her feelings on the matter. She blushes a bit and shrugs, then shakes her head decisively.

The change is as quick as the last time she witnessed it. One moment Nux is crouched in the sand as a human with the last of the dying sun on his skin, and the next he's contorted himself into becoming a great hairy beast. Capable gasps when it happens, the sight not an easy one to rationalize.

The dog stretches and yawns, all his many sharp teeth exposed, shakes himself out before seeming to notice the humans. Furiosa had made a point of giving Capable a weapon to carry with her just in case and there's a moment where she palms the handle of it, but the wolf- and it's hard to think of it as Nux, even knowing now that they're one and the same- just wags his tail and gives a little yip of excitement.

Furiosa tosses a piece of jerky that she had packed at him and he snaps it up eagerly, then dances closer to beg for more. It's so like the other nights she'd spent with him that she reflexively checks the shadows for the second dog, only remembering that Max was still somewhere else when her eyes land on Capable instead.

“I wonder if it hurts, to change like that?” Capable muses out loud, holding her hand for the wolf to sniff at. He licks her fingers and then pushes his head into her hand, wordlessly demanding for his ears to be rubbed.

Furiosa shrugs, it's not anything she's thought of. Max wouldn't have told them if it did and there's no telling how much of it all Nux remembers, but she doesn't think Capable is looking for an answer anyway.

Once the wolf has greeted them both he paces a circle around them and the car, tail waving like a flag as he presses his nose down to the sand. He ranges a considerable ways away, far enough that Furiosa feels glad to have made the decision of putting as much distance between them and the Citadel as she had, before slinking back, looking dejected.

“He's looking for Max,” Furiosa says unnecessarily as the dog returns to the flickering circle of light put out by the lantern Capable had insisted on. As if on cue he tips his head back and opens his mouth to let out a howl, thin and reedy with just the one voice.

“It sounds so strange up close,” Capable says when the noise dies down.

They wait for an answering howl for a long few minutes, until the wolf lets out another call.

“Shouldn't Max answer?” Capable asks, concern in her voice.

“It's still early,” Furiosa says, not yet worried. She grabs another piece of dried meat and waves it near the dog's nose, distracting him from his scrutiny of the horizon. “Nux is here, and he knows I always bring food for them. He'll turn up eventually.”

She'd had the foresight to bring something for the dogs to fetch, another scrap of plastic that wouldn't be missed if it got lost. After a bit of hesitance Capable starts playing with him, throwing the toy and rewarding him for bringing it back with bits of meat and ear scratches. Furiosa lets herself step back to watch the two interact, leans against the bonnet of the car with a small smile on her face.

She's never felt the urge to share her nights with the dogs, but seeing Capable play with the wolf has nearly the same calming effect that she's grown used to. If Max would show up already it might be a truly pleasant night, but despite Nux's frequent howls the plains are silent.

Capable shoots her concerned glances the longer they wait, but she doesn't speak up. Eventually the wolf tires of chasing down the plastic scrap and flops onto the sand by Capable's feet, tongue lolling out as he smiles up at her until she sits down to pet him.

There are plenty of reasons why Max might not show up, ranging from him being dead to stubborn to trapped somewhere. If he was in trouble Nux would surely be reacting to it, which means he's probably deliberately staying away. Furiosa had been upset to learn that he was the dog she'd grown fond of but maybe it went both ways, and he didn't like people to see him as an animal when they knew who he really was.

The entire night passes by without so much as hint of Max's presence. When the sun starts lightening the sky and changes a dozing Nux back to human, Capable puts a sympathetic hand on her arm before moving to shake the boy awake.

Nux frowns while he gets his bearings, stepping back into his pants and stretching to reacquaint himself with his human body. “Max didn't come, did he?” he says.

“No,” Furiosa says with a shake of her head.

He rubs at the skin of his chest with a splayed-open hand, still frowning. “He doesn't feel hurt,” Nux says, “Just... far away, I think.” Which is what she had already surmised, a scenario that makes sense when she considers how flighty their fool has always seemed.

“Maybe he was just too far away to make it last night,” Capable offers, “And he'll be here tomorrow.”

Nux smiles at her, “I bet that's all it was.”

Furiosa keeps her own theories to herself in the face of their optimism; silently she acknowledges how unlikely it is for Max to have found himself too far away from the Citadel to meet with them by accident. Whether he turns up for the next night remains to be seen, but she won't be surprised if he continues to stay away.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no idea why it's taken so long for updates to get written, but I have no intention of abandoning this story! Thanks to those of you still sticking around. ♥

Furiosa isn't surprised when Max fails to show up for the second night of the full moon. Nux spends all his time pacing and whining, howling miserably, only able to be distracted by her and Capable for a few minutes at a time. It's exhausting, and Furiosa finds herself increasingly resentful of the fact that Max left them to handle the distraught wolf on their own. It's with a petty twist of meanness that she hopes that he's having a rough time of things as well, at the least.

When the sun comes up and Nux changes back to human he repeats that there didn't seem to be anything _wrong_ with Max, just that he wasn't _there_. He stays quiet and sullen all day, turning uncharacteristically snappish as the last moonrise approaches.

“He's not going to show up, is he?” Capable asks as they watch the wolf Nux turned into pace restless circles around their car.

Furiosa shakes her head, if their fool was going to turn up he would have already. Capable sighs and hops off the car's bonnet to try and get Nux's attention again, a scrap of meat in her hand.

The wolf whirls on her with a low growl, eye glowing bright blue in the moonlight, looking not at all like the friendly animal Furiosa had grown familiar with, even less like the human he really was. His pale fur stands on end, making him appear even larger than ordinary, and with stiffly-moving limbs he approaches the girl.

Furiosa recognizes the body language but doesn't wait to see if it's just the play-fighting the two wolves had often engaged in. She pulls out her gun and shoves off the car, mechanical hand held loosely in front of her to ward him off should he attack.

“Get behind me,” she says to Capable, then focuses her attention on the wolf. His bright eyes land on her as a potential threat, growl going rougher where it echoes out of his chest.

There was no way to know how much Nux understands when covered in fur, but Furiosa doubts he's thinking much like a human at the moment. “Nux, calm down,” she says anyway, keeping her voice level. “It's just us; there's no threat here.”

The wolf only bares his teeth in a snarl, looking every inch a predator as he takes another step forward.

“Furiosa...” Capable starts to say, and the wolf takes that split-second of divided attention to lunge. His teeth meet the metal of her prosthesis and clamp down, the weight of him causing her to stagger in the sand as she absorbs the blow.

“Get in the car!” Furiosa calls out while she fights to keep her feet under her.

The wolf's front paws rake at her, blunt nails catching on her belting and landing heavy, disorganized blows while he pushes his weight from his back feet. He's tall enough on two legs that his head forces her forearm up above her shoulders, well beyond the point she can effectively brace against.

It's enough to send a quaver of fear down her spine, though she holds herself firm. She's fought with men of all sizes and states of mind but this animal moves differently, lacks even the faintest glimmer of rationality behind his eyes. She doesn't know how to counter a maw full of sharp teeth, what might happen if she loses her feet from under her.

With the pistol heavy in her hand Furiosa hits the wolf on the side of his head, hoping to break his concentration enough for him to release her. He flinches as the blow lands and momentarily stills, eyes tracking the movement of her hand when she goes in for another swing. She doesn't want to shoot, not if she doesn't have to, but she keeps her finger by the trigger.

“Let _go_ , Nux,” she hisses, gives a vicious twist of her metal arm to wrench open his mouth, his sharp teeth breaking one of her hydraulic lines in the process as his grip falls away.

He springs back, shaking his head and mouthing at the bitter taste of hydraulic fluid, and Furiosa stays tensed for another attack, cold sweat chilling her skin in the breeze. But the wolf seems to deflate, ears and fur lying flat before he slinks away to lie in the sand a few meters away.

“Are you okay?” Capable asks nervously from behind the opened car door, still only half inside.

Furiosa brings her mind to gentle her breathing, harsh even to her own ears, those thrice-damned scars on her lungs restricting her ability to take in air. One of the wolf's paws had landed right on one of her stab wounds, as healed as it'll get but still a sore spot when the adrenaline rush fades. There will probably be fresh bruises in the morning, but she's otherwise unharmed.

“I'm fine,” Furiosa replies when she's done taking stock, keeps the wolf in her sights as she backs up to the reassuring solidity of the car.

Capable spends a moment fussing over her anyway, dabs at a barely-bleeding scratch Furiosa hadn't even noticed on the upper part of her arm. When she speaks her voice is quiet, like she feels she shouldn't ask but can't help it, “Is he hurt?”

Furiosa hadn't hit the wolf very hard, not even enough to cut his skin, and she shakes her head. “No,” she says, eyeing his despondent form lying still in the sand, “Just upset.”

She risks taking her eyes off the wolf to check the damage to her prosthesis, grimaces when she sees the warping and surprisingly deep gouges his teeth had left. The fingers are stuck in place, useless without the line to power them, but she thinks the structure of it should hold up to repairs.

The wolf whines, loud in the surrounding silence, then rolls to his feet and swings around to face the open dunes away from their circle of lantern light. He lets out yet another howl, and when the echoes of it have died down without answer he pounces on the dried-up remains of a scrub to tear into it with a vicious growl.

“We should let him be tonight,” Furiosa says, eyeing the wolf warily. She has no desire to do any real harm to him, regardless of how permanent it may or may not end up being, and isn't inclined to waste bullets on warning shots that might not even be heeded. Capable says nothing but she remains inside the car, which is as good as an agreement.

They spend the rest of the night by tossing bits of meat to the wolf through the windows when he draws near, neither of them talking. When the sun rises and Nux changes back to human he's still in a sour mood, but looks honestly horrified when Furiosa tells him about what happened.

“I did that?” he asks, fingers hovering over the gouges on the struts of her prosthesis without touching.

“It wasn't really you,” Capable is quick to say, for what little good it does.

Nux sits grimly in his seat as they drive back towards the Citadel, alternatively staring out at the rolling sands or his own hands. “Maybe you should put a muzzle on me,” he says quietly, “Or lock me up. I don't want to hurt any of you, not if I can't even help it.”

“It'll be better next month,” Capable offers, “Even- even if Max doesn't return.” Nux wraps an arm around her and rests his head against hers, but he doesn't say anything.

Furiosa wonders whether she had formed her opinion too hastily, if the wolves were truly as dangerous as Max had always said they were. She wouldn't have believed him earlier, having never felt unsafe with the animals, but after last night she thinks she can better understand his caution.

  
  


She decides not to venture into the main workshops to care for her mangled arm. The thought of being surrounded by countless people while she works grates on her nerves, and she'd rather not have to lie about what caused the damage, unusual for a supposedly quiet night.

Her room has a small workbench and enough parts for the repairs, door left just far ajar that she can keep an ear out on any commotion in the hallway. Rather, she thought it had enough suitable scrap. In the light of day she can see that the wolf's teeth have done a great deal more damage than she initially thought.

Furiosa had to remake her prosthesis entirely after losing the original on the Fury Road, and the new one was lighter- which her shoulders appreciated- but less robust. In addition to the broken line and gouges on the supporting struts, one of the main joints at the junction of 'palm' and fingers is compressed, metal bent askew where Nux's teeth had bitten down, one single perfect puncture hole in the middle of the finger's soft internal grip.

It'll have to be pulled apart and almost entirely replaced, and Furiosa lets the metal drop heavily to the table in frustration.

There's a sharp knock at the door, and she turns to the distraction gratefully.

“Come in.”

Toast appears, a sheave of papers in her hand. “Wanted your opinion on the new fuel rations for training drives,” she says in a bored tone, eyes zeroing in on the discarded prosthesis. She steps close to hold out the papers, visibly itching to pick up the arm and look at it, but having enough respect to restrain herself.

“Nux really did a number on it, huh?” she says, “I though Capable was exaggerating, but- whew. Good thing it wasn't your good arm, right?”

It's exactly the sort of chatter that Furiosa had been hoping to avoid by working in her own room, though at least here she won't have to hide the real cause. She takes the papers and looks them over quickly while Toast tries to figure out discreet ways of inspecting the damaged mechanics.

The numbers on the page are clear enough, solidly based on the discussions they had worked out in the past few days. There wasn't any real need to get her input. Out of the corner of her eye Furiosa sees a finger snake out to point at, or perhaps touch, the crumpled metal on the workbench.

“Toast,” she says sharply, arresting the movement.

“Looks like you'll need to replace that joint,” Toast says, finger retreating. “Right? It doesn't look like you could just hammer it back into shape.”

Furiosa snaps the sheave of papers down over the damaged mechanism, hiding it from sight.

Toast been taking more of an interest in mechanics, something that Furiosa had only sought to encourage, and on an ordinary day she might take the girl along and explain what it was she was doing to repair the prosthesis and why. She was used to working with an audience, usually curious Pups too young to be picked for specific apprenticeships yet, and passing on knowledge- even for something as personal as her second hand- wasn't something to avoid.

But today, after a long night of dealing with an overwrought animal that rendered her prosthesis useless on top of reassuring his worried partner, the fact that Toast had scrounged up an obviously flimsy excuse and then reached out to touch what wasn't hers without permission has Furiosa biting back a snarl of irritation.

“The allotments are fine,” she says curtly, sending Toast an unamused look.

Toast takes an exaggerated step back from the workbench, hands held open in front of her, expression teasing. “I guess Nux wasn't the only one who had a rough night without Max,” she says, missing the point entirely.

Furiosa thrusts the papers back at her, what little remained of her patience gone.

It's not until later, after she throws a spanner across the room for being the wrong size, that Furiosa admits she really is quite angry. She was always expecting Max to leave at some point, and it wasn't even the fact that he had done so without telling her that was bothering her. It was more the fact that he had stressed how dangerous werewolves were, how important it was to have Nux away from people for the full moon- and then he'd left the boy alone anyway.

Furiosa knew she could defend herself, had only proven it the night before. But if she hadn't been quick enough it might have been Capable who met with Nux's teeth instead, and _that_ was intolerable.

Identifying the source of her irritation at first does nothing towards alleviating it but by the time Nux slinks to her doorway, hands full of a box of choice scrap, she's gotten most of it squared away, compartmentalized. It was a skill she'd honed over thousands of days of pretending to worship the very same man who'd stolen her, killed her mother, used her in every conceivable way. She'll let the anger idle until she's ready to either utilize it or let it go, keep it separate from her daily interactions.

Nux sets the box carefully on the workbench after being let in; there's a length of fresh tubing coiled up over the top, just the right diameter to be patched into her system.

“I'm not mad at you,” she says, taking a guess at what he might be thinking as he drops off what was obviously a peace offering. She doesn't offer up the fact that she's decided to be angry at Max instead, that in her mind the absent road warrior could shoulder the blame for the miserable night they had all endured.

Nux props himself against the wall, looking pensively down at her workbench. “I can't even remember,” he says. “You're pack, and the _point_ of pack is you don't go after your own. But I don't remember what I was thinking, what would make me just... not care.”

Furiosa doesn't know anywhere near enough about what goes on inside a wolf's brain to have an insight to offer him. He and Max would often play-fight, jaws snapping and catching only to break apart with wagging tails, but she has to admit that's not what had happened the night before. There was nothing playful about Nux's actions when he'd taken her arm into his fanged mouth.

“Capable just says it wasn't my fault,” he continues, “but- that doesn't matter, does it? Hurt is hurt. I think you should have a muzzle, or put me on a chain, maybe, next month. If I'd really hurt you...”

“I held my own,” she reminds him.

Whether it was his fault or not... she believes that he doesn't have conscious control, that the wolf acts differently enough from him for her to see it as a different creature entirely. Can an animal be blamed for lashing out? Even if the distress he was feeling wasn't physical pain, she was inclined to think it was no different than any other beast reacting to being struck. If you can't find the source, you turn on what you _can_ see.

Nux nods, face glum. “You'd stop me before I hurt Capable, wouldn't you? Even if you hit where I couldn't heal from.”

“In a heartbeat,” Furiosa replies. She was fond of the boy, and he'd proved himself willing to be helpful in whatever way he could be, but no matter how close to him Capable grew, he wasn't her priority should it come down to the two of them.

It seems to reassure him to hear, because he finally smiles, tentatively. “Toast wouldn't say she was apologizing,” he says, reaching into the scrap box to point out a few conspicuously shined bits of metal, “but she bartered for that set of pin-joints on her own.”

  
  


She's woken from a sharp, twistingly frantic nightmare by someone knocking at the door. Her eyes snap open, hand already closing around the comforting hilt of a knife, trapped for a moment in the surety that the blood and darkness and pain she'd been seeing were real.

“Furiosa?” Cheedo's voice calls out, hand knocking on the metal door once more.

She blinks, the details of the dream already fading, chased away by the familiar surroundings of her room lit by the dawning sun. Furiosa tucks the knife into the waistband of her sleep clothes just in case before moving to open the door, heart-rate still in the process of ratcheting down.

It was unusual but not unheard of nowadays for her to be summoned directly from her room before the morning meal, an action that usually heralded some minor disaster. In the hallway Cheedo looks tired, but not panicked- nothing dangerous, then.

“Dag said to get you,” she says, “There's something with Nux...”

“Something?” Furiosa prompts, pausing to step into her boots before entering the hallway. It had been about ten days since the last full moon, and though they did have to chain Nux up for the duration in the continued absence of Max, she can't imagine what would affect him so far out. Unless it had nothing to do with his being a werewolf, though surely the Dag wouldn't be involved if that was the case.

Cheedo shakes her head a little helplessly, gestures down the empty hallway to where the room Nux and Capable had decided to share lies.

She pulls aside the thick tapestry over the doorway to see that Nux is pacing restlessly, hand rubbing over the skin of his chest. The Dag sits perched on the edge of the bed next to Capable, absentmindedly teasing her daughter's reaching fingers with braids from her hair.

“Furiosa!” Nux calls with a measure of relief, halting his frenetic movements once she steps into the room, Cheedo close behind. “There's something wrong.”

Before she can ask for more information the Dag tilts her head to look Furiosa in the eye, says, “Your wolf needs you.”

Vague and unhelpful, exactly the sort of statement that probably contributed to the anxiety she can practically feel radiating off of Nux. “What's going on?” she asks.

“I thought it was just a bad dream,” Capable says, “Nux was tossing and turning all night, but...”

“It's Max,” Nux says, “I can feel- he's hurt, I think. In a bad way.” His hands haven't stilled in their movements over his skin, rubbing as if he's soothing some internal ache.

Furiosa had mostly forgotten that the link between the two wolves could do more than drive Nux half-insane in Max's absence. The night she'd found Max's body bleeding in the sands rises in her mind, the way Nux had unerringly guided her despite being essentially an animal at the time.

“Dag could feel it too,” Cheedo adds, stepping over to take the infant out of her arms.

So their Fool had run off and, as seemed inevitable for someone who wandered the wasteland without backup, gotten himself hurt. Furiosa finds that she's not particularly surprised. The question was whether they would try to mount a rescue mission, if the benefits of dragging home what might end up being no more than a corpse outweigh the risks of sending a rig out. And they heal swiftly, as Max's earlier recovery attested to- by the time they found him, he might well be completely unharmed.

“Could you find him?” she asks Nux, unsure of how much help his connection would be.

“Yeah,” he replies readily, “It's... loud. I don't think I'd have much problem following it.”

It's obvious that he wants to head out, was probably only restraining himself because Capable asked him to wait. If she says no to an official expedition, Furiosa fully expects to find the two of them stealing a car by the end of the day regardless, something that will most likely end with all three of them dead instead of just Max.

“Alright,” she says, deciding that there isn't much use in forbidding the trip. She finds that she too wants to go, wants to drag Max back by the scruff of his neck and reassure herself that he's healthy enough to withstand her still-simmering irritation. “Dag, you feel something as well?”

The Dag shrugs, gives a surprisingly direct answer for once, “He's hurt, and not alone. Most I can tell is there's a lot of howling.”

Not alone... He's probably fallen captive to some wasteland tribe instead of crashed, then, though why they hadn't killed him she's unsure. Were they hoping to string him up for use as a blood-bag? She'd seen the tattoo darkening his back, knew it tallied his supposed worth. Perhaps they were hoping to ransom him, marked for Citadel property as he was, unaware that they no longer dealt with human livestock.

“Nux, I want you to get a car ready,” Furiosa says. “Scout or ute, we don't want heavy artillery.” They'll be armed, of course, ready to defend themselves, but an ostentatious vehicle would only provoke whatever gangs they chanced across. “Capable, get together a med kit. Who knows what sort of shape Max'll be in when we find him.”

Nux leaps to action, obviously relieved to have some task to do that would bring back his missing pack member. Even Capable looks more at ease, agrees readily to oversee getting rations for them all as well.

They load up a rig with enough guzzoline and supplies to last them ten days, far longer than Furiosa hopes the search will last. There's no telling where Max has gone, with only Nux's impressions and the Dag's nebulous “not alone” to guide them, and the lack of a clear heading has her on edge.

The Dag presses a packet of dried herbs at her before they leave, powdery and unidentifiable. “For fleas,” she says with one of her peculiar smiles, like she was telling a joke only she understands. “Among other things.”

Furiosa isn't sure why it might be helpful but she accepts it anyway, tucks it away into one of the pouches around her waist.

She drives. It's not a question that she's the one to drive- Nux would, perhaps, be the better choice as it was his vague directions they were following, but she takes the wheel and neither he nor Capable protests.

The anger she's been cultivating since the first full moon without Max has twisted in on itself, grown all sorts of strange while she wasn't paying it attention. With nothing but the open road ahead of her Furiosa picks at it, teases out the knots tied up in it. She's undeniably angry that he put her people in harm's way and that makes up the bulk of it, but she realizes with a lurch that Max has somehow found his way into that very same category, himself. The fact that he's now the one hurt by his decision to leave isn't accompanied by a rush of vindication as she might have anticipated but the same protectiveness that she feels towards the others.

It sours her anger, that tang of concern, until she can't even enjoy the righteousness of her irritation.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Head's up for animal & human death in this chapter!

The scout vehicle Nux picked has a good engine, stable and fast if a bit prone to overheating.

Their general heading is south-west, an area littered with rocky crags and abandoned old-world cities. As it turns out, Nux is unable to both focus on the feeling of Max's distress and drive at the same time, which means that Furiosa and Capable do the bulk of the driving.

The girl's become quite proficient at handling a wheel in the time after their revolt, navigates the rocky terrain at a steady pace without a hitch when Furiosa needs a break.

It takes three days of tense driving before the “pull” Nux described finally leads them to a physical location.

At first glance it looks like a small camp tucked up into the shelter of a rock crag, marked out with a scrap-metal fence and cairns of various sizes. After a closer look through their strongest spy-glass, the cairns prove to be piles of bones both animal and human, and the fence is marked with faded blood scrawls declaring it to be "The Hunting Lodge". There aren't any wrecked vehicles to be seen, suggesting that either this tribe was efficient with scavenging, or they killed afield.

“I can't smell him,” Nux says, nose turned to the wind. “That's where I _feel_ him, but I can't smell anything but people.”

They've already spent a few hours circling the area, hoping to pin-point where Nux's connection was leading them. It's likely that they've been spotted, but no force has appeared to attack, so for the moment they're camped just far enough away to plausibly be outside their territory. Furiosa's banking on them thinking that a single car would be little enough threat against an entire settled tribe, not worth the effort of a preemptive strike on their part.

“Are we close enough?” Capable asks, as if any of them have a solid idea of how far Nux's sense of smell can stretch. It was a little disturbing to think that he was able to pick up anything at all from something so far away, but Furiosa was choosing not to focus on that aspect for the moment.

She picks up the spy-glass again, scans the encampment for any further clues. “What if he was inside of something?” Furiosa asks, eyes landing on an ugly dented trailer standing a little ways apart from the rest of the vehicles.

“Maybe?” Nux replies, shifts where he's stretched out next to her on the ledge they'd climbed to for a better view. “I can definitely smell that camp since the wind's going the right way, but there's just normal people stuff.”

She passes over the binoculars to him anyway.

“I guess,” he says after a moment.

“What would they even want with him?” Capable says, plucking the glasses from Nux's hands to look for herself. “I mean, they haven't moved him further to the Citadel, right? So they don't want to ransom him, but he isn't dead yet.”

“He said we were hard to kill,” Nux hedges, “Maybe they can't?”

“It's been nearly five days,” Furiosa says, “Nothing is that hard to kill.” Unless they were drawing it out on purpose, for some sort of ritual maybe, even though Nux had said that the pain he was feeling from the connection had eased up after the second day. The piles of bones certainly do make it seem a likely scenario, and all the better to get the Fool out of there quickly.

“So the real question is, how do we get him out?” Capable asks, turning away from the daunting view. “He's in that camp somewhere, and if they're not looking for ransom, which we don't have to offer anyway, I doubt we can just go up and ask nicely.”

“There's not that many,” Nux says with the easy confidence of someone still used to factoring his own glorious death into the equation and finding the odds favorable. “We could take 'em, easy.”

Furiosa considers this for a moment, though an open fight is definitely not their best chance at success. Capable doesn't have anywhere near enough weapons experience for Furiosa to be comfortable letting her into a true fight, but although Nux had primarily been a revhead, War Boys were cross-trained from early on.

“We should have brought more backup,” Capable says.

“We'd never have made it this far,” Furiosa replies. A fleet of War Boys would make it more than easy to get into that camp, true, but they wouldn't have been able to slink around the territories they had passed through if they had more than their one small vehicle. Having only two fighters was less than ideal, but rescue missions were often more about stealth than brawn.

“Let's just wait for dark and charge in,” Nux says, “They'll be asleep and never see us coming!”

“There's only you and me going in, Nux,” Furiosa says, “We won't be charging anything.”

“Hey, I'm here too!” Capable says indignantly, “Just because I'm not as good as you doesn't mean I can't help.”

“We'll need you here,” Furiosa replies, “You've had rifle training, you'll be our backup. My SKS is heavier than you're trained with but the scope can cover this distance, easy.”

It pacifies her slightly, learning that she isn't being discounted, and Capable deflates from her preemptive anger. “And I can keep the car ready in case we need a quick getaway, I suppose” she says after a moment with a bit of a resigned sigh. “Alright.”

As if the idea is distasteful to him Nux says hesitantly, “So we're... sneaking in?”

Furiosa nods, “We should set a distraction to draw them out, give us enough time to find Max and get out.”

It's not the most finessed as far as plans go, but simple was often effective.

  
  


Getting in turns out to be fairly easy. A large number of vehicles drive off as the sun starts setting, leaving the camp more deserted than they had thought to hope for. It's troubling that the battered trailer is brought along with them, and yet Nux says it doesn't feel as though Max has moved with it.

There's only a pair of guards on duty once the camp settles in for the night, lax in their scrutiny of the area as their watch hours wear on. Not worth the hassle of killing since there's a shadowy gap between the fence and the rock it abuts, not even in the direction the guards have been lazily watching.

Furiosa has to sit back and let Nux sniff the air, trying to pinpoint Max's location without going through the danger of trawling the few tents.

“I still can't really smell him,” Nux breathes into her ear, just loud enough for her to hear. If he wasn't in that trailer, and he isn't out among the tents or cars, then where...

Her eyes land on a dull metal door set into the rock, at an angle they wouldn't have been visible from their own camp. Something tucked behind that wouldn't be easy to sniff out, Furiosa doesn't think, and she points it out to Nux.

“Yeah,” he says in reply, “I think- yeah.”

The door's held shut with a heavy bolt, a nerve-wracking thing to maneuver silently. Thankfully the dull metal doesn't flash in the moonlight, and she and Nux slip inside, pull it shut behind them as quietly as they can manage.

The foul stench of the air inside hits her like a physical force, blood and piss and an herbal smokiness, layered on top of one another until her nostrils burn with it. Nux gags, and she yanks her scarf off her own neck to haphazardly cover his nose with, sure the smell must be overwhelming to his stronger senses.

It leaves Furiosa with nothing to muffle the stench with, but she's endured worse. The next problem is how dark it is inside, absolutely no light to be found once the door's shut. Not the sort of false-darkness that could be adjusted to, but unrelenting and entire.

“Can you see?” she asks Nux anyway, now that he's stopped choking. Maybe wolves were able to see in the dark where humans couldn't. It would be useful for one of them to not be blind, anyway.

“No,” he replies, voice muffled through fabric. “Max is definitely in here though.”

Furiosa risks lighting a flare, because if there was some sort of inner guard they surely would have attacked by now. The flickering red light illuminates a fairly large cave, the walls covered in animal hides. There's not a few human skins as well, stretched out grotesquely amid furs and scales and feathers. Some sort of carcass lies on a large metal table off to the side, meat already going sour.

Further back are squat black shapes, metallic and barred- cages, she realizes. There's movement in some of them, and she steps closer to get a better look.

The largest cage in the corner has a huge wolf, eyes glinting oddly in the light of the flare, teeth bared and one long growling note issuing roughly from its mouth. The next is empty, the one after contains a much smaller wolf, perhaps only a dog, lying listlessly on the ground. There's a stack of smaller cages in the far corner, most empty save for one that has a strange furry shape, squirming indistinctly.

“Max!” Nux says, rushing to the cage with the large wolf. It does look somewhat like the wolf that Max turns into, but it was hardly the full moon. Closer to new than anything else, really.

“Are you sure?” she asks, stepping back to the cage warily. There is no hint of recognition in its eyes, just the sort of blankness she expects from an animal. Nux has never said anything about being able to become a wolf without it being the full moon, and the creature before her doesn't seem like it has any sort of human understanding.

“It's him,” he replies with steady conviction. “Help me get the cage open!”

“I'm not sure that's a good idea,” Furiosa says. The wolf is pressed against the far end of the cage, fur bristling, looking as if it would gladly tear their throats out. There's nothing about it that suggests it's really Max, much less that it wouldn't rush them the second the door opened.

She brings the flare closer, realizes that there's a basket of metal wrapped around the wolf's snout, a muzzle that keeps it from even opening its mouth all the way, much less being able to bite one of them. It wouldn't be too hard to fend off like that, should it attack. And if it really is Max...

“Max?” she says to it, searching for any hint of recognition. “Max, calm down. It's us, we're here to get you out of here.”

The wolf's growling continues but seems to lighten, grow a little less harsh and desperate. Nux unwraps the scarf from around himself and throws it into the middle of cage, something that has Furiosa turning to him with a silent question on her face.

“It smells like us,” he says, “He probably can't smell much over all this-” he waves a hand around the room, as if she could ignore the reek of gore and shit and herbs wafting through the air- “and... he's a little feral, I think.”

If it really was Max and not just a dumb beast, then it was far beyond the sort of feralness he had displayed on the Fury Road, more in line with the animal blankness Nux had shown in snatches on the last few full moon days. Still, it was as apt a description as any. The wolf noses at the scarf warily, nudging it with his muzzled snout.

Abruptly the growling ceases, turns to a pitiful whining as he covers his teeth from view again, fur sleeking back down as his hackles lie flat.

“See!” Nux says triumphantly, and finally succeeds in wrenching out the heavy catch-bolt holding the cage latch in place. The door swings open and Furiosa braces for the wolf to lunge, changed demeanor or not, but he only steps forwards into a crouching Nux's open arms cautiously. She lets Nux field his advance, one hand on the flare and the other hovering near her holstered handgun, ready to intervene.

The wolf starts twitching his tail from side to side, not quite wagging but on the way there, and lurches forward with a pitiful whine to press his head against Nux's chest, drawing in deep snuffling breaths.

“It's okay,” Nux says, hands smoothing over his fur, “We got you.”

Furiosa lets them have their moment of reunion, glancing at the other cages. If their Fool was one of the captive beasts, was it possible for the others to also be shape-changers?

A yelp of pain snaps her attention back to Nux, gun pulled before she finishes turning. The wolf doesn't seem as if it's attacked him, mouth unmuzzled but teeth put away, all four paws on the ground still.

“It burned me,” he says, looking at his hand quizzically.

“What did?” she asks, not seeing anything that might possibly be burning except for their own flare, clamped in her prosthesis and held far away from his skin.

“I dunno, something in his fur! I thought it was a collar but when I tried to get it off, it hurt me.”

It's hard to tell in the distorted red light, but Nux's fingers might look somewhat blistered. Furiosa cautiously leans in closer to the wolf to see if there's anything around his neck and he whines loudly, squirms past Nux's relaxed hold and shoves himself at her.

“Hey Max,” she says quietly as he butts the flat of his head against her leg, and thinks but doesn't say, 'I missed you too.' The wolf paws at her, loose and nonthreatening, until she holsters the gun again to dig her fingers into the fur of his head, scratches at the base of his ears.

There's a sturdy chain wrapped around his neck, some sort of rope twisted up around the links of it, nothing that reacts to her skin at all when she brushes her fingers against it. There's no obvious latch to it that she can find, the fit too tight to move from its spot on his neck, and she resigns herself to having to leave it until they reach the bolt-cutters back at the car.

“We should leave,” Furiosa says, trying to guess whether the night watch would have switched out yet. It didn't seem likely, but there was no way to know until they opened the door.

Max goes abruptly still before turning away from her and Nux, darts off to the side of the room with the stacked cages. He whines pitifully, braces up on his hind legs to scrabble at the stack, and it's enough of a strange reaction that she feels compelled to investigate.

“This would be easier if you changed back,” Furiosa tells him though she has no idea whether it's something he has control over, walks over all the same. The cage with its indistinct squirming reveals itself to have what she's pretty sure are puppies inside, small and furry and whining.

“Huh,” Nux says, drawing near. “I think they're werewolves too.”

“How can you tell?” Furiosa asks, nudges Max aside until he drops back to all fours and she can get at the latch. There's only two moving, one much larger than the other, eyes glinting in the flare's light. If the puppies are werewolves, then it means that under the fur they're human, just children. It's one thing to leave behind an animal, but she can't imagine leaving a child in this gore-spattered cave. Some of the hides tacked to the wall were quite small.

“That one's just a dog,” he says, “The other cage, I mean. But these smell kinda like me and Max do, more... I don't know a word for it, really. More something.” Furiosa glances back at the other cage, sees that the dog which had previously been paying them no mind is now pressed close to the front of the bars, head moving slightly as if trying to follow their movements.

“We'll bring them,” she says decisively, unlatches the cage. The larger of the pups squirms away from her hand but she scruffs the smaller, passes it off to Nux to hold. The one on the floor- two of them, she thinks, are obviously dead, stiff and unmoving.

“It's okay,” Furiosa says in what she hopes is a reassuring voice to the remaining pup, “We're getting you out of here.” It remains uncooperative and she has to fish around the cage for it with dwindling patience, dodging its nipping mouth in hopes of getting a decent grip on the slippery fur.

“Hey!” Nux says indignantly behind her, and she turns to see what the matter with him is. Max darts away from the boy with something- with the puppy in his mouth.

“Max, what are you doing?” she hisses, because he couldn't be so feral that he was planning to _eat_ the thing, could he?

The wolf ignores her, places the pup on the floor near the bars of the occupied cage. The dog inside has a much smaller snout and is able to dart out and snatch the pup, bringing it into the cage and out of reach.

It's not eating the pup either, she realizes after a moment, but is licking its fur, washing it.

“That one was a dog?” she guesses out loud, which earns her a whine from Max and a slow tail-wag. Nux shrugs, mumbles something about being it hard to tell apart smells like this but maybe? Well, one puppy would certainly be easier to handle than two.

Furiosa finally closes around the scruff of the pup's neck and hauls it out of the cage, which begs the question of where it's going to go. It's heavier than she anticipated, squirms uncomfortably when she tries to tuck it into the crook of her elbow, doesn't react at all to the reassuring nonsense she tries to tell it.

“Nux, take this,” she says, and the pup seems if anything even less pleased about this, but with two good hands he manages to keep a decent hold on it.

Her scarf should be lying discarded in the cage but when Furiosa looks it's gone, and after a quick sweep she sees that it's been taken up by Max, dangles from his mouth. She reaches to take it from him and he dodges away, as if they were playing a game. “Max,” she says, hand extended expectantly, “Give it.”

With obvious reluctance, the wolf drops the scarf from his jaws after a moment. She helps Nux bind the struggling puppy up in it before it gets shoved into the largest of his pockets, weight pulling his pants askew but leaving his hands free.

“Break in the fence is twelve meters to our right,” Furiosa says mostly for Max's benefit, to make sure he knows they're not planning to fight their way out. If they're lucky they can slip out as quickly as they got in, the night guards none the wiser.

“Flare's going out,” she says in warning before plunging it into a bucket of some liquid that she is not going to investigate, the flame hissing and flickering before leaving them in total darkness again.

She waits a moment for the after-image to leave her eyes, already knowing that her night vision will be utterly useless, and then grips the handle of the door.

Furiosa opens the door slowly, hoping they can slip out the same way they came and remain unnoticed. Unfortunately as soon as the fresh air hits its nose the pup starts crying out, high wavering yips and howls loud in the otherwise silent night.

“What the fuck.”

“The door's open!”

“The fuck is it open for.”

Furiosa doesn't bother cursing the turn in luck, just readies her gun and braces herself to clear the exit. She takes a deep breath, ignores the stench still searing her nostrils, and kicks the door the rest of the way open.

There's a torch burning in the camp now, something she's immensely grateful for since her night vision is still ruined. It illuminates the two guards as they stride for the door, no guns but heavy melee weapons in hand. She doesn't bother to properly aim, just shoots in their general direction for cover, shoves at Nux with his cargo to get him to head for the break in the fence.

There's a strangled yell and she thinks with a twist of satisfaction that she must have hit one of them after all, but it's followed by growling and what sounds like tearing flesh. Furiosa turns, sees that the guard holding the torch has been tackled to the ground, Max crouched over him.

The second guard stabs his blade downwards at the wolf's side, at such a close range that he can't have missed. Furiosa shoots him in return and is satisfied when his body drops to the sand, mind mostly blank but for rage. They did not go through this trouble to drag home a fucking corpse.

What people remained in the tents are appearing now, roused by the shouting and gunshots no doubt, armed and ready for a confrontation.

The wolf still has his feet under him, but there's blood dripping down into the sand from wherever he was hit. His ears don't so much as twitch to Furiosa's direction when she tries calling him over because there's still time to _leave_ dammit, just growls savagely as he tenses for the attack.

She doesn't think this camp has bullets to waste, or the guards surely would have been armed with guns, but Max is already injured and it wasn't as if fangs were a ranged weapon either. He springs on one of the men as they approach, blood spraying across the sand as he's driven off his feet, and then there's noise and blood and a warm gun in her hand as Furiosa fires.

The details of it slide away in her mind, the way that battles often do. Furiosa counts her bullets and fires, dodges, fires again. Nux throws himself into the fray gleefully, the sort of thing he's trained for since he was old enough to earn a name, unhampered now by half-life sickness. The wolf attacks here and there, a whirlwind of fur and fangs that blends in with the night, until the camp lies still once more.

Down in one disheveled row of tents Nux practically vibrates with his battle-high, eyes wild as he starts kicking bodies to make sure they're true corpses. “That was _historic_ ,” he says rapturously. There's a bleeding gash across his side, blackish in the moonlight, and either it's not a particularly bad wound or he's riding his adrenaline too much to feel it because it seems to be giving him no trouble.

“Wrap that,” she commands, throws him a scrap of fabric that was in one of the toppled tents. He looks surprised to see himself wounded, grimaces but complies.

The wolf is nowhere to be seen. Furiosa finds that she's picked up one of the tribe's maces in lieu of her emptied gun, grips the worn handle of it as she leaves the massacre. There's a trail of dark blood, drips here and there on the hard-packed ground, that leads away from the tents towards the few vehicles left. Not enough that she's sure of finding a corpse at the end of the trail, but enough for her to be glad they'd packed a med kit.

“Max?” she calls out, not really expecting any sort of answer, just hoping she doesn't find the wolf completely feral again. He'd reacted well enough to her the last time he was injured, but that was before tearing apart half a dozen men with his bare teeth.

There's the sound of something scraping against metal, a low whine.

Furiosa finds the wolf with his head and shoulders thrust through the window of a familiar car, paws catching at the metal as he attempts to heave himself up inside.

“Max,” she says with mingled exasperation and relief, because of fucking course he'd put up this fuss over getting to his car.

The wolf pulls back from the window and drops back to all fours on the sand, ears pulled low and generally looking miserable.

“If it doesn't run, we're leaving it,” Furiosa warns. She knows that he's attached to the rig, but it would be ridiculous to try and fix it while he bleeds out and the rest of the settlement could return at any minute, and it wasn't as if they have the resources to haul it with them.

Max whines sadly but wags his tail slowly from side-to-side, doesn't seem aggressive at all as she approaches the car. He stoops his head to grab something off the ground, a dark shape she'd discounted as a shadow. His fucking jacket, of course.

It's so ridiculous that it startles a quiet shock of laughter out of her. Max was currently a _wolf_ , wounded in some way she can't even see through the fur, had been stuck in a cage in a room lined with corpses for the past few days, had just bitten a handful of men to pieces, and he'd stopped to find his piece of shit jacket.

He seems as surprised as her at the outburst, skitters away out of reach of the weapon still in her hand.

Furiosa ignores him, opens the car's door to try and start the engine. It turns over and catches, which is somewhat surprising. The noise of it draws Nux's attention and he comes running, one hand awkwardly holding the puppy in place as it bounces against his leg, skids to a halt when he sees that it's just her.

They spend a few more minutes to grab guzz from the camp's supplies to fill the tank and then fang it back towards the overlook where Capable and the med kit are waiting.


End file.
